Wasteland Restoration Movement
by Xander 576
Summary: The Lone Wanderer has sent out a call to all of DC, beckoning them to join the WRM, why he is ammassing a group of mercs, doctors and scientists is anyone's guess, but it is surely not a sign of gentle change. M/LW some bad language  Mother-ship Zeta
1. Frustration, Desperation and Salvation

**(Project Purity)**

Scribe Bigsley was about to crack, he knew it, his subordinates knew it and Brotherhood command knew it, it wasn't so much about being overworked, although he never missed an opportunity to say he was, he had little to no time to sleep but he never slept much anyway, every single person in the wastes seemed to have a complaint to throw at him and Lyons, that old bastard wasted no opportunity to reprimand him as he worked him to the bone for his little 'mission' of charity for every illiterate waster out there, fuck him, fuck the water and all of the pricks out there who have nothing better to do than bitch at him. He caught a reflection of himself in his terminal's screen, god he had become so pale, never stepping outdoors can do that to you, and the bags under his eyes were starting to look as though somebody had punched him, twice, while wearing brass knuckles, he really was not looking good. Bigsley stared at the ceiling as he tried to catch a quick nap a feeling he had become quite accustomed to began to overtake him , he hated his work, hated how tired he was, but it was something else, he was… bored, shipment orders, inept scribes and caravan payments, he was born into the Brotherhood like anybody else, but he stayed because he wanted to see the technology of the old world, the innovations, the mistakes, the wonders, Project Purity offered none of these, sure it was innovative, hell brilliant even (though he'd never admit it) but it was finished, they didn't him, he fixed, improved, analysed and developed, this was a job for a bureaucrat, he was a scientist, and with every minute that passed he wasted away in this scientific purgatory, dear god he needed to get out of here. Bigsley looked down as he heard footsteps approaching.

"Oh hey was there something else?" Bigsley asked as the Lone Wanderer, walked through his door.

"Tell me Bigsley are you completely satisfied working here?"  
>The Wanderer asked with a sly smile.<p>

**(Megaton Common House)**

Jackal sat on his shitty bed and casually ate his squirrel stew, he was only seventeen but he had already made enough doing any job he could to finally get his own place. He had roamed the wasteland since he was twelve and had been getting by doing odd jobs in places like Rivet City, when he turned fourteen he had saved up enough for a pistol and some ammo, after that it was any job that he could get, scavenging, mercenary work, assassination even, after a while he earned a reputation and got better job offers, one job led to another and after a while he earned enough to buy his own place. As he finished his squirrel stew he got up and headed for the door, the common house was a shithole, full the desperate and worthless, he hated it there and leaving it gave him the best feeling he had for a long time. He strolled down the hill and past the bomb, he admired himself in the inert bomb's reflection, he filled out his leather armour quite nicely, no more sleeves to long for him or big boots, his skin had quite a nice tan for an Asian and his black hair complimented his skin tone rather well, he was handsome, much like his father had been but he was a man now and he was damn proud of it, and he knew his old man would be proud to. He nodded his head and smiled, five years and now he was about to start settling down, he re-checked his backpack, five thousand caps clanked about inside of it and he wanted to make sure no-body got any ideas. He continued his stroll up to the main gate of the town and approached a small stall; it was a new installation, apparently the Lone Wanderer's idea, the stall's sign read: Megaton Citizen Directory and floating behind it was a Mr Handy robot called Wadsworth, a donation by the Lone Wanderer, Wadsworth had become the town mayor of sorts, it didn't make the decisions per se but Jericho the town's sheriff listened to it quite carefully.

"Hello sir! Do you have a complaint?" Wadsworth said in a cheery British tone

"No, stupid robot, I want to buy a house" Jackal impatiently grumbled

"I'm sorry?"

"Uh I said I would very much like to purchase a house… please" Jackal said trying to hide the desperation in his voice, there was no way in hell he was going back to the common house. Jackal was about to hand over the caps when out nowhere some random tackled him to the ground. "What the hell!" was all Jackal could say before he hit the ground, the assailant tore the backpack off of him and made for the open gate. Jackal chased after the thief but she was small and fast, by the time they got into Springvale he lost her. He fell to the ground and repeatedly beat it with his fists, all of the shit he went through and now he was back where he started. He just sat there for hours, looking at the ground, so enthralled in his loss he didn't even notice the three raiders sneaking up behind him.

"Hahaha, well I'll be damned fresh meat!" one of the raiders screamed as he bashed Jackal's head with a lead pipe. Jackal hit the ground hard but rolled forward to get some space; he'd been hit before and could deal with the pain later, right now he had three bastards looking to make a meal out of him. His pistol was in his backpack and all he had on him was a combat knife. He was lucky that none of them were packing or he would already be dead, but he had play this real carefully, raiders are fucking cowards who just rush their target when they have more numbers, but he can use that to his advantage. Just as he thought, the three of them came at him screaming, wildly flailing their lead pipes about, Jackal lunged forward at the one in the middle, in one smooth motion Jackal slit the raider's throat and rolled away, unharmed by any of the raider's clumsy attempts to hit him. The raider's looked down at their comrade and then at Jackal who gave them his coldest look and he had more than a few, they decided that he wasn't worth the trouble and simply ran away, Jackal had considered chasing them, but there was no point, he decided, with much reluctance to head back to the common house, looks like the quiet life wasn't in the cards for him yet, but goddamn if he ever got his hands on that little bitch, Jackal spat at the ground and trudged back through the Megaton gate, and once again past the bomb, he didn't admire his reflection this time though.

"Hey man, I thought you were getting your house today, what the hell you doing here? Jesus what the hell happened to you!" A young man said as Jackal sat at his old bed again. Jackal knew the man as Pit; apparently he called himself that because he was briefly a slave in the Pitt before the Lone Wanderer hit that place like the second scourge. He was a peppy bastard, always talking, but could be real quiet when he had to be. They had worked a few jobs together and struck up a friendship, Pit did most of the talking for both himself and Jackal. Jackal felt his head and grimaced when he saw blood on his hand, Pit quickly patched him up as Jackal recalled the last couple of hours to him. "Aw shit bro, I'm really sorry, I thought I saw one of those kids, remember when we hit that raider joint and pilfered the place for the Brotherhood, yeah I didn't think one of the little freaks would follow us!" Pit sunk his head down obviously ashamed, Jackal told him not to worry about it, his old man never let shit like this get to him, Jackal was so ready to be a real grownup, like his father, his own place, a job hell maybe even find a girl of his own but it was all gone before he even knew what happened. Any of the anger he felt just washed away as the world buzzed around him, one of the advantages of get smacked across the head. Pit sat the end of Jackal's bed as he lay down, couldn't risk falling asleep in case he had a concussion. Pit turned on the radio he carried around and tuned into GNR in an attempt to take his mind off of it.

"Hello my children and welcome to the coolest station in the wasteland. It's been so nice and quiet lately hasn't it? Seems like I don't got shit to talk about any more, it's finally time for ol' Three Dog to hang up his disks and take a breather… Psyche! Hahaha I'm just kidding children don't cry just yet, Three Dog' still got a few tricks up his sleeve yet, like the long awaited tales of the Lone Wanderer series! That's right children, after weeks of digging and with the cooperation of the Wanderer himself we got a new program to lift your little hearts out of those wasteland blues! In loving memory of our first adventurers Herbert 'Daring' Dashwood and Argyle, rest in peace and hope you enjoy the show." Pit jumped up in excitement and Jackal sat up as they both heard this. The two had lived hard lives in the wastes and were still young, almost boys, even though they were making the transition into men they still looked up to the wanderer like a child to a super hero, perhaps Three Dog did have a way to get rid of those blues. The residents of the common house seemed to gather around the radio, equally as interested as the boys were, some brought chairs over and some just sat on the floor, but the radios inside of the house all had a small circle around them. They all kept quiet as a deep yet energetic voice bounced of the out of the radio.

"You're listening to the adventures of the Lone Wanderer played by Knight Sergeant Wilks of the GNR Brotherhood detachment in: A Behemoth of Troubles.

"Damn there are super mutants all over the city! How could my father have gotten through here alone? Oh no more of them!" the sounds of bullets shot through the radio, some the wastelanders who hadn't been in many fights jumped, Pitt and Jackal just sat contently listening.

"There they are sentinel, the super mutants that were flanking us!" presumably a paladin said in an overdramatic tone

"What is that wastelander doing here, he'll get himself killed!" a sultry female voice exclaimed

"Oh my god sentinel Lyons, he, he shot their heads off, with only a 10mm pistol!"

"Hello miss I trust you weren't harmed?" the Wanderer said suavely

"No of course not, the Brotherhood is trained for this, but that was impressive Mr?"

"Many call me the Lone Wanderer, and who might you be Miss?"

"Lyons, Sentinel Lyons, a pleasure, I'd love to stay and chat but I have to make it to GNR before these detestable super mutants, destroy it, we'd all be lost without Three Dog's wonderful radio station."

"You're quite right Miss Lyons and has chance may have it I'm on my way there now, perhaps we could travel together?"

"Why it would be a pleasure" Many of the Wastelanders were laughing as they made suggestive jokes about Lyons and the Wanderer's 'behemoth'. The sounds of obviously fake running and panting dominated the radio for a few minutes; the room became smoky as many of the wastelanders lit cigarettes during the brief intermission.

"Look there it is GNR, what beautiful sight after those super mutants!" Lyons said while panting

"Hahaha we kicked those muties asses" a brash voice said obnoxiously

"Damn it Redding quit clowning around and secure the area by that wall of cars over there" a military like voice barked

"Wait what's that rumbling? Oh no, Redding get away from those cars!" the Wanderer yelled followed by a loud crash and growl.

"It's a behemoth! We're doomed!" Lyons yelled in flimsy voice

"Wait that Fat Man over there may just be our ticket to salvation, duck and cover!" a large explosion sound followed and the crowed jumped even Jackal and Pit. "Tune in next time to hear the adventures of the Lone Wanderer played by Knight Sergeant Wilks" The crowd laughed and some even clapped as they sat back after the show. All of a sudden Three Dog's voice jumped out at them

"Don't change that dial yet children I've just received a holo-tape from the man himself and its marked important!" The crowd was once again enthralled as the deep brown voice of the real Lone Wanderer filled the room in a much more serious tone.

"To the men and women of the capital wasteland, I am starting a group dedicated to protecting the people of the capital wasteland, any who wish to make DC a better place or want to see advanced technology should apply for testing, I need as many combat veterans, tech-savvy scientists and tinkerers who can work with advanced technology and skilled doctors as I can get, all must have a wish to keep the peace and experience in their field. All applicants are to make their way to the MDPL-13 Power Station just north of Minefield. Thank you and good luck this is the Lone Wanderer, leader of the Wasteland Restoration Movement."

"And here I was thinking the wasteland was getting quiet awoooo! You heard the man children if you have the know-how and the heart of gold try your luck and see if you're WRM material." The room was completely quiet; Jackal and Pit looked at each other, and they both knew that there wasn't a thing that was going to stop them meeting their hero. Jackal smiled at his friend and said

"Screw the quiet life, we're gonna be heroes."

**(MDPL-13 Power Station)**

The Wanderer spun around on his chair as Bigsley typed at the terminal on the desk beside him. They had taken the small power station outside of the large power plant and converted it into a recruitment office; their definition of convertment meaning turning the desk to face the door.

"You know I left the Brotherhood because all they had me do was office work" Bigsley grumbled as he prepared the terminal to record the names of people who get accepted.

"Trust me Bigsley, when we get the people I'm going to show some technology that'll make your head spin, literally if you're careless" The Wanderer chuckled as he continued spinning like a child. He was wearing his old regulator duster and a particularly shady hat; he had his medic armour lying around somewhere, probably got tired of the damn thing talking all of the time Bigsley guessed. The message that the Wanderer had delivered to Three Dog had been played a little more than three hours ago if the Wanderer was any judge he guessed that the first of the applicants should be arriving very soon.

"You still haven't told me where we're going after this" Bigsley said quizzically, looking at the strange man from the corner of his eye.

"No I haven't" The Wanderer said in a devil may care tone. Bigsley sighed and surrendered the point; whatever it was that the Wanderer was hiding from him must be good for him to be this paranoid. The two men heard knocking at the door and prepared themselves for the throngs of people looking to chase their fortune or see this advanced technology promised; it was going to be a long day.

"Am I late?" A blonde haired man wearing white combat armour asked meekly as he stepped in through the door.

"Oh Elliot I thought you were going to be but you're just in time, Bigsley meet Dr Elliot Tercorian a friend I… bumped into quite a while ago." The Wanderer said as he continued to spin.

"Ha if by met you mean captured by –"

"Shut up! You'll ruin the surprise!" The Wanderer yelled throwing a baseball that was lying on the desk at Elliot

"Hahaha sorry, sorry! I'm sure he wouldn't believe me anyway." Elliot chuckled as he held up his in defensive manner. Bigsley and Elliot quickly shook hands and continued preparing for the applicants.


	2. Welcome to the WRM

"Hello children! Time once again for G.N.R! Here's the skinny on that wild wasteland out there. Been two days since the Wanderer AKA Mr 101 sent out his recruitment ad for the WRM, and people have been flocking in droves! Are you a defender of the people? A tinkerer not to be tinkered with? A saw bones who can patch with the best of them? Or maybe just a Lone Wanderer fan boy? Well maybe you should try your luck and head on down to the MDPL-13 Power Station, hurry while positions are still available!"

**(MDPL-13 Power Station, Power plant)**

The Wanderer addressed the large group of mercenaries in front of him from the plant's catwalk. Many of them seemed to be seasoned, most wore combat armour, others went with leather or metal but it made no real difference. The Wanderer explained the 'application' process in a loud and slow voice.

"Okay well this is a good turnout isn't it? So it's rather straight forward first we'll do a little shooting range test, then a hand-to-hand competition and wrap it up with a suitability test, simplicity itself, I'd ask if there were questions but if that confused you then you should probably leave now" The Wanderer said in a cheery voice. To his surprise about half a dozen men left leaving around thirty or so remaining. "Well that was quick."

**(MDPL-13 Power Station)**

Bigsley had arranged a deconstructed laser rifle lying on the table he pointed out the very basics of its design and told the group of a dozen or so in front of him and repeated for the larger group outside that each of them would have to individually reconstruct the rifle, fire it once and deconstruct it for the next participant, after that they would take the suitability test with the mercenaries and the doctors. The group formed a line outside and came in one by one, every once and a while the applicants would hear a laser shot and see a proud man or woman strut out of the office, but more often than not, there would be no noise and someone would walk out with their head hanged low. Bigsley consoled himself that at least he got to choose subordinates this time, less of a chance to be stuck with the inept; this offered him little comfort though, what was the point of having a workforce with nothing to work on?

**(MDPL-13 Power Station, Garage Entrance)**

Elliot did a quick head count of twenty medics, one or two had a doctor's experience but mainly the group had enough experience to be medics or nurses at best, good enough for now but he imagined he would spending a lot of time teaching.

"Okay gang so first we'll be doing a quick medical test then we'll be doing the suitability test" Elliot said in nervous upbeat manner. "Uh okay so who can tell me the proper treatment for infection after receiving a bullet wound?" Elliot resisted the urge to leave very hard when half of the people there said amputation.

**(Scrapyard)**

Jackal and Pitt had crossed the Bridge and snuck past the Bethesda ruins, as the sun fell they made their camp at Scrapyard, inside one of the abandoned busses. Pit barricaded the windows and door with the scrap metal while Jackal stared a small fire inside, soon the fire became their only light, The two checked their gear and rations making sure they had enough ammo and food to make it to the power station, Jackal had gotten his hands on a Chinese assault rifle from a super mutant corpse and constantly checked an re-checked it, the super mutants were deadly but they treated their weapons like shit, Pit lovingly tended to his 10mm sub machine gun, replacing pins and springs, cleaning, polishing and just about every other thing he could do to keep his prize possession in mint condition, when the two were satisfied that they wouldn't need any more rations and that their gear was in good condition, they decided to tune into GNR with Pit's radio.

"GNR, Three Dog, all you need to know. Time once again for another instalment of the Tales of the Lone Wanderer!" Three Dog said in his normal energetic voice.

"You're listening to the adventures of the Lone Wanderer played by Knight Sargent Wilks. Today's episode: A Ghoulish Complication."

"Wow that Behemoth didn't know what hit it!" Lyons exclaimed in amazement "You're certainly a man of many talents Mr Wanderer"

"Well I certainly aim to please Miss Lyons, now before any more of these horrors show up we should get inside" The Wanderer said. The sounds of walking and a door opening followed.

"Well hello Mr Wanderer! What can I Three Dog the jockey of disks and bringer of enlightenment do for you?" Three Dog chuckled, obviously delighted to be part of the show.

"My god Three Dog! It is certainly an honour to meet sir! If you know who I am than surely you know why I am here, please help find father!" The Wanderer said in overdramatic desperation.

"Of course my brother of course, but first I think you should know that there's a tragedy going on here."

"What is it that could make you look so pale?"

"GNR my baby, the wasteland's source of enlightenment and hope has been crippled by those damn super mutants, without a new dish nobody outside of DC can hear the soothing rhythms of GNR!"

"Good god! This is a travesty! A disaster! I cannot in good conscience continue on my search until this horrible problem is fixed!"

"Hahaha I knew you were one of the good ones kid, you'll need to head through the metro tunnels and make your way to the museum of technology to grab the dish and replace it on the Washington monument, careful kid those tunnels are swarming with ghouls."

"Ha fear not Three Dog I think I can handle a few feral ghouls." More sounds of movement preceded and ended with what sounded like a chain link door being opened. "My goodness it is dark in these tunnels. Ah who's there?" growling filled the bus as scarily realistic feral ghouls began to chase after the Wanderer. "Oh dear looks like I might have bit off more than I could chew this time. This. Could. Be. It. Tune in next time to hear the adventure of the Lone Wanderer played by Knight Sergeant Wilks. The two slowly drifted to sleep as the music of the inkspots filled the bus.

**(MDPL-13 Power Station, Power Plant)**

There was twenty five applicant's remaining after the five lowest scoring mercs in the firing range test were dismissed. Now there were three circles of the group and two people inside of the circles fought each other in hand-to-hand combat. Three people had already been dismissed for using brass knuckles, and two had been knocked out. The Wanderer lazily examined the fighting from above and waited until everybody had had a turn.

**(MDPL-13 Power Station)**

By the end of the test Bigsley had a group of fifteen who had shown that they were competent, about half were scientists from somewhere or other, the rest were just repair people who knew their way around machines and tech. Bigsley was satisfied that they would be able to keep up but he didn't even know what kind of technology they were going to be examining, he had a couple of hours to kill before the suitability test and there were more applicant's arriving so he got his team to set up more laser rifles to be disassembled, at least he had help now.

**(MDPL-13 Power Station, Garage Entrance) **

By the time Elliot was satisfied that only the competent doctors remained there was only five left, three women and two men. Elliot was truly concerned about how many idiots were posing as doctors out there but focused his mind on his team.

"Okay so we've established that over use of stimpacks, rad-x and other useful chemicals out there can be lethal but how do we know what dosage to use in different situations? Well there are a few tricks out there that can save lives when you don't have the proper medical equipment, such as examining the patient's skin, if their pale and have been shot, this would mean they've lost a lot of blood, now unlike what some the other applicant's said before leaving, you don't just 'stab a bunch of stimpacks in them' you'll need to get a blood pack."

**(Minefield)**

Jackal and pit worked their way past the remaining mines in the small town, carefully scanning the ground, disarming the mines and moving on, it was a methodical and time consuming process but in just a few short hours they were on they were on the other side of the town and ready to make their final push towards the station. Jackal and Pit spotted a large group of mercs just outside the station and were afraid that they were too late. They quickly ran up to the group and asked whether they were right or not.

"Ha! You kidding me? That fucking prick is barely taking anyone 'your aim isn't good enough, you're not allowed to use brass knuckles in a hand-to-hand test, stay away from the chem supplies!' Bah like I need that kind of shit in my day-to-day." One of the leather armour wearing mercs spat. Jackal and Pit were relieved to hear they didn't have enough people yet and hurried along to the station proper. They saw a man in red robes sitting outside of the power station and decided to ask him where to apply. When they got close they saw that he was asleep, he didn't even move when the two heard laser rifles fire from inside the station. Pit gently nudged and jumped back as the man sprung to life.

"Don't make sign more caravan orders!" The man shouted as he sprung consciousness. He yawned and looked around, then took in the two boys that stood before him. "Oh right, I quit, nice. So who the hell are you two, we don't need any more tinkerers or scientists, try your luck with Tercorian." The man yawned with a complete lack of interest.

"Uh were here to-"Pit spoke before being cut off by the strange man

"Yes, yes here to join up with magnificent and glorious Lone Wanderer, but if not mistaken we asked for 'experienced' people not toddlers barely out of their mother's skirts" the man impatiently grumbled. "You two scientists, medics or mercs?"

"Mercs" Jackal promptly responded

"You're screwing with me right?"

"No"

"You know what, whatever, you kids want to play hero whatever, I don't even care, mercs apply inside of the power plant, use the door entrance not the garage one, that one's for medics" The man once again sat back in his chair and almost instantly fell back to sleep. The two boys sheepishly looked at each other and wordlessly walked to the power station. As they entered they were bombarded with the smell of gunpowder, sweat and blood. The boys weren't strangers to the smell but still had to fight to avoid coughing. There seemed to be three sections inside the plant. To the right there was a small firing range, just in front of the entrance there were the circles, men and women stood on the circle lines and two people fought each other in the middle and behind the massive industrial chimneys there was two long rows of desks facing a projector that played odd little cartoon slides showing what looked like the Vault-Tec mascot in different situations such as fighting raiders, saving children, stealing water and a wide variety of other things. The boys were instantly approached by a man in green combat armour.

"What in the high holy hell are you little pukes doing here, this is a recruitment facility for soldiers not a day-care!" The man screamed at the boys. Pit jumped back but Jackal held his ground, he had seen this type of thing in other merc groups, drill sergeant plays hard-ass to scare off the bitches and see if the mercs can operate under pressure.

"Been killing since I was twelve sir! And Pit didn't take that name for laughs he's been through the worst the Pitt can throw at you sir!" Jackal kept a stiff posture and kept his eyes forward, showed he couldn't be shook by some loud words.

"Oh been killing since twelve? Well of we need somebody to get rid of the radroaches we'll be sure to give you a call, how old are you maggots?"

"Both seventeen sir!"

"Ha get out and try again in few decades or so and the we might talk"

"Now, now Sergeant, let's not be too hasty" a soft but deep voice said from above.

"Sir they're seventeen" the Sergeant said respectfully

"I'm nineteen, let's see what they can do" The boys looked up and their hearts almost stopped, the Lone Wanderer leaned on the railings with his elbows, his coat slightly swaying from a breeze coming from one of the holes in the ceiling, his face half shrouded from the shady hat he wore, his dark skin, half covered in grime and dust from the wasteland, he smiled at them and nodded towards the firing range. The boys were given assault rifles and told to hit the super mutant dummies. Pit hit the chest numerous times but he wasn't use to the spray effect from his rifle, after finishing his clip he took out his 10mm sub machine gun and decimated the head of the dummy. Jackal fired a few shots which completely missed, after fixing the sight he decimated the head on his own dummy, they had done quite well but there was still many mercs who laughed them off. Next they were both put in different circles and matched with mercs who had already passed the three tests. Jackal was a straight up puncher but knew that he couldn't take the merc head on. When the merc swung wide Jackal took his opening and kicked the mercs kneecap in, the crack was sickening and Jackal simply stepped out as a man in white combat armour excitedly ran up to the injured merc followed by five wastelanders in the bloody clothes of a wasteland doctor's garb.

"Okay good opportunity, how do we treat a patient with a broken leg?" the man asked, the pupils seemed ready with an answer but before anybody said anything the man quickly added "without amputating or kicking it back into place." The students were silent after that. The man sighed and got his students to bring the increasingly nervous merc back to the medic's section for treatment. Pit was next, he was a small wiry type of guy and the merc he was facing almost twice his size, but Pit wasn't fazed, he rebelled at the Pitt and made his way to DC alone, he knew how to handle himself, before the merc had a chance to act, Pit kicked him as hard as he could in the testicles and knocked him out with a swift kick to the head, so many people don't realise the value of a surprise attack. The room was filled with laughter as they saw the large man go down, the boys were slapped on the back and congratulated, all they had left was a 'shit easy' as one of the mercs put multiple choice test and they were in. The boys found two seats next to each other and waited for the test to begin. The Lone Wanderer casually strolled to the front of the desks and with a small remote started the projector.

"Okay only a few questions and we find out whether your WRM material, this will be the final test so pay attention. Okay so question one: you see a group of raiders about to attack a merchant. Do you A. rush to the merchant's defence, B. engages the raiders from afar, C. wait for the raiders to finish killing the merchant so you can loot the remains or D. throw a grenade and hope for the best?" Jackal didn't even have to think, before putting B down.

"Question two: a group of children run towards you in the wasteland, they claim to be victims of a super mutant attack and beg you for help, but you catch them trying to steal all of your caps and rations. Do you A. Pistol whip the children to teach them a lesson, B. Leave them alone in the wasteland to fend for themselves, C. take your things back but offer to take them to the nearest settlement or D. give them the supplies?" It went on like this for about an hour or so until they finally handed in their sheets. Jackal and Pit sat against the wall by the projector anxiously waiting for their results. It was twenty minutes before the sergeant approached them and gave them a quick salute.

"Congratulations boys welcome to the WRM" he gave them a smile and left to deliver the rest of the news to the eagerly awaiting mercs, techs and medics. Jackal and Pit high fived and laughed out loud, they were part of the legend of DC' group, and had a life of adventure and fortune waiting for them, Jackal almost felt glad he got robbed, now he had a bright future as a hero to look forward to and a friend to share it with.

**(MDPL-13 Power Station, power plant upper office)**

The Lone Wanderer leaned against the wall as Bigsley sat at the only desk the room while Elliot sipped a Nuka-cola while sat against the desk.

"All in all that went rather well I think. In total I have forty two mercs." The Lone Wanderer yawned

"I have twenty five techs and scientists." Bigsley responded as updated the logs on the terminal

"I managed five doctors and ten medics" Elliot said between swigs

"So we have enough to get started then" The Wanderer said definitively

"It might help to know what we're getting started" Bigsley said at Elliot, completely giving up on getting information out of the Wanderer.

"Don't look at me, I'm not going to ruin the surprise, he'll never let me hear the end of it."

"So true old friend, you'll see tomorrow Bigsley, just have a little patience." The Lone Wanderer checked his pip-boy to see that the personnel data safely transferred and, then left for the power station, to wipe the local terminal of the recruitment information. Bigsley huffed as he saw the other two men leave, he didn't like all of this cloak and dagger business, but it was either this or mind shattering dullness in project purity.


	3. Welcome Home

Eighty two people trekking across the wasteland, it was quite a sight to see. Their final destination was surprisingly close, not even ten minutes of walking before the Lone Wanderer stopped the group in front of a strange white object; it looked like some kind of undetonated missile but, different.

"So someone have to stay and make sure the rest get through okay" The Wanderer said almost as if he was asking something, something Elliot instantly seemed to get.

"Alright, alright, fine, but only because I don't need to deal with you moping for the next couple of weeks." Elliot sighed.

"Hahaha, and that's why you're my bestest buddy!" The Wanderer giggled like an extremely disturbing child. "Alright gang so we're going to circle around the beacon, don't touch that! Damn scientists, no offence Bigsley, okay groups of ten form around it, no don't hold hands, honestly." As the Wanderer got the first group organised, Jackal couldn't help but notice the green embers that floated around what the Wanderer called the beacon, _beacons don't make craters_ was all Jackal could think as he casually looked around. He was taken by surprise when the Wanderer abruptly grabbed him and put him into the circle next to Pitt. "What, I want to see your faces when we get there" The Wanderer shrugged. The boys looked at each other with a growing sense of anxiety. The Wanderer seemed to be satisfied that he had as many people as he could and strolled up to the beacon. The device sprung to life as the top of the beacon elevated and a mechanic voice echoed out of it.

"Passphrase?" the voice asked in a flat tone, the Wanderer simply smiled and in a tone so low that Jackal could only just make out what he was saying he whispered.

"Take me home." And in those split seconds Jackal became part of the universe.

**(Citadel, the Great Hall)**

The Great Hall had never been a place of good news, the super mutants, the Outcasts, the Enclave, all of these disasters had been discussed in the Great Hall but now they were faced with a very 'grey' situation. In the months following the war with the Enclave the Lone Wanderer had begun amassing rare weapons and technology, all the while his popularity with the people skyrocketed, and now this, this Wasteland Restoration Movement, the beginnings of an army. The Wanderer had maintained friendly relations with the Brotherhood of Steel and had proved himself to be an honourable if odd man time and time again, but many in the Brotherhood were becoming nervous, how long before the two groups would have to decide who has authority over the wasteland. Some of the soldiers were talking about how his father was responsible for project purity, how many wastelanders see it as the Wanderer's by right, many in the Brotherhood so easily forgot that it was he who drove the Enclave and much of the super mutants into remission. These were the thought of Elder Lyons as he sat at the table of the Great Hall with the rest of the Brotherhood leadership, his daughter Sarah was obviously angry at the suspicion being thrown at the Wanderer, Rothchild just looked as tired as Lyons himself did and Paladin Tristan mirrored the attitude of Sarah, if this was not dealt with delicately another schism could form, tearing the Brotherhood apart, they could not survive another outcast incident.

"I mean has it occurred to anyone that maybe he's not a power hungry maniac? Who's to say he's not forming the WMR because he knows about some threat we haven't detected, it wouldn't be the first time, look at the Pitt for god's sake, that traitor was going to march on us eventually and he stopped it before it even started!" Sarah said with growing impatience.

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe he's not a saint despite what everybody believes? He wouldn't be the first hero to go bad after getting some power." Rothchild replied in a tired but annoyed tone.

"He saved us, twice! Hell if he wanted power he probably could have taken over the Brotherhood if truly wanted to."

"Oh and then you two could go off and kill behemoths together and live happily ever after Miss Lyons?" Rothchild replied in a mocking tone

"That's complete bullshit! It was nothing like that!" Sarah shouted becoming increasingly flustered

"Oh so it wasn't the Wanderer who killed the behemoth?"

"I-it was him, yes, but that just goes to show that he's not our enemy!"

"Yet"

"Never!" Elder Lyons sighed as there seemed to be no end in sight for this argument, until Gallows walked wordlessly and saluted Sarah and the Elder.

"Sir, I've scouted the WMR just as ordered and, well you may find this hard to believe." Gallows said in his cool even voice. Elder Lyons sat back in his chair and prepared himself.

"Tell us everything."

**(Mother ship Zeta, Bridge)**

Bigsley was wordless, he had never even dreamed of seeing anything like it, the world, in all of its broken beauty greeted him, the sun so monolithic yet somehow gentle shone through the glass of what appeared to be the command centre of this, this thing that they were on now, a space station? A spaceship perhaps? It wasn't human that he was certain of, no signs of English or any other human language, just holographic pictures that showed each terminal's purpose. Bigsley's thoughts were interrupted by the manic laughing of the Wanderer and to Bigsley's surprise a little girl.

"Hahaha oh my god if only you guys could have seen your faces! Well, welcome home, we haven't found out much but we have discovered the ship's, it's an alien ship by the way, name. As the captain and commander I formally welcome as the new crew of the WMR high command vessel and your new home, the Mother Ship Zeta!" The Lone Wanderer said with a salute and a broad smile. "Now you should meet the first members of this merry little band of misfits" The Wanderer said as put the little girl on his shoulders. "This is little angel is Sally"

"Hello, wow the captain was right you really don't sleep enough, I can see the bags under your eyes from here!" Sally said with astonishment as she stared at Bigsley, who shifted uncomfortably.

"Sally! Use your manners!" The Wanderer admonished in a fatherly tone. Sally sheepishly apologised as she was put down. "Don't mind her, she hasn't had much contact with other humans since she was… taken by the ship's former crew, but she knows more about this ship than anyone else, if it wasn't for her, we'd basically be stuck in the bridge, now we have access to more than half, and believe me that is a considerable amount of space." The Wanderer then directed Bigsley to small side room in the bridge as Sally showed the scientists who were part of the first group the consoles of the bridge. There were three very small corridors decorated with various Japanese scrolls and paintings, in the middle seemed to be another teleportation matrix, but powered down, a man in full samurai armour walked out of the left corridor. He lazily examined the two men, yawned and went back the way he came. "That was Mister Toshiro Kago, yes he is an ancient samurai, don't ask I'll tell you later." The Wanderer sighed and nodded towards the bridge, when they entered and saw the techs already hard at work and the rest of the WMR arriving they wasted no time, there was so much to do.

**(Weapons Lab)**

Jackal and Pitt were in heaven as far as they were concerned; the ship was the single most amazing thing they had ever seen. The first sight they saw was the earth and both were simply at a loss for words, after an hour of exploration they were even more enamoured with the ship, the technology was weird but awesome; Pitt found an archway that actually healed his cuts and Jackal found some kind of goo that repaired his guns. Unlike everywhere else in the wasteland the ship was actually clean; Jackal had never seen metal shine so brightly. They had spent the last couple of hours in the weapons lab, being taught the basics of using the atomizers and disintegrators, they weren't all that different from energy weapons on earth really, the Wanderer would explain basic repairs to the techs and mercs, and then the techs would use their part of the lab to analyse the tech while the mercs used the shooting range for practice, when the Wanderer was convinced they were all up to standards he gathered them up in a place he called the steam works and their first real mission begun.

**(Cryogenics lab)**

Elliot didn't much like the cryo lab, besides the fact that his squad died here; there were too many dangerous subjects, supermutants, feral ghouls, raiders and god knows what else. Elliot didn't spend much time in the wasteland but he had seen enough to know that whatever the aliens picked up off there was probably better of being frozen. He addressed his small medical team with a voice of authority.

"Okay, guys we've already gone over basics, now we're going to figure out how to use the cryogenic equipment here for medical purposes, for the love of god don't touch anything I don't tell you to and pay attention." Elliot was in his element here and was far more confident giving his team orders here rather than down there, which is probably why he didn't have any problem slapping the head of one of the medics about to put his hand into cryogenic liquid. "Next time I'm just going to let you do it" he sighed.

**(Steam works)**

The Wanderer led half of the merc forces through steaming maze of pipes and metal. This was the one place that the Wanderer hated the most, it was hot and uncomfortable, noisy so anything can get the drop on you and it's corridors reminded him too much of the vault. There were still alien corpses about; the new boys seemed to be fascinated by them, the others just seemed disgusted, the Wanderer told them to focus. They were there to kill the remainders of the alien crew; Sally had determined that they managed to stay hidden by continuously moving about through the metal maze. If the aliens got desperate and managed to make it to a critical electronics console, they could shut off life-support, vent sections of the ship or just decide to kill everyone and blow up the ship, there was still far too many electronics that they didn't understand and they could no longer afford the risk. Every once in a while they would happen upon an unfortunate alien and end it quickly; it wasn't until several hours in that they finally discovered the final group. Five alien soldiers sitting near an exposed pipe, warming themselves with the steam. They were a mournful sight; their naturally slim frame was even more petite with malnutrition, the Wanderer felt pity for them but knew that if they were left alone they would make a suicidal push against them. After some silent signals the mercs killed all of them in an ocean of blue light, their deaths were quick, painless and a damn sight more merciful than anything the aliens offered to the human captives. The Wanderer recalled all of the captive's recordings he found and his usual cheery self became more akin to the man who sent out the message to the wasteland, cold, serious and determined to stop things like this from happening again.

"Alright men that should be it, take the rest of the day to get your bunks sorted out and relax, oh and try to have some fun huh? How many opportunities do you get to see a space ship?" The Wanderer said forcing an unconvincing smile, while most of the mercs cleared out, the Wanderer and some mercs began to clear out the bodies.

**(Bridge)**

Bigsley was truly in paradise, he was in a clean, comfortable environment, surrounded by technology scientists have wet dreams about and he finally had a view in his workspace, and what a view it was! He and five other scientists had been hard at work seeing what could be controlled from the bridge, and the answer was damn near everything! Life-support, death ray, half of cryogenics, all of the robot assembly area and more could be accessed and controlled from the bridge. The bridge wasn't just the command centre, it was the nerve centre of the entire ship; the head scientists must have been the crew for the bridge, from the layout it would seem that they received information from all over the ship, relayed it to the captain, and responded to his orders, they could identify situations and have them remedied in a matter of minutes. Bigsley turned when he saw the Wanderer enter the room and despite himself ran up and hugged him tightly.

"My god, this place is technology heaven! Those closed minded idiots in the Brotherhood couldn't hope to understand half of the things in this room alone. Come on check this out!" Bigsley said eagerly as he pulled the Wanderer to a console. "Okay so you look forward and you see a window right? Wrong! I push this button and it turns into a holographic projector, it's ship-wide as far as we can tell" Bigsley proudly announced as the 3D image of the two very surprised boys jumped up before the captain's chair. Bigsley promptly cut the connection before either boy could make a smart comment. "That's not it, we were able to beam the beacon back aboard the ship, it's in the hanger right now, oh and did you know that we have hundreds of them! We could have teleportation points across the wasteland, hell the world even! We're currently trying to figure out how to fly the small ships but that will take a while, current stock taking put the number of ships at twenty but there was still plenty more, uh what else? Oh of course! Luckily the damage to the robot line was minimal, we can probably have it operational in… a week maybe? Less if we get more people." The Lone Wanderer laughed along with Bigsley as they thought of all the possibilities but the Wanderer quickly calmed Bigsley down.

"Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, first we have to get everything working , tell me have the techs been able to figure out how long until the orbital death ray is operational?" The Wanderer asked in a serious tone.

"What do you need that for?" Bigsley asked nervously, he loved the technology but he didn't sign up to be part of a dictatorship.

"The guardian robots will be useful in supermutant suppression, but when we identify breeding grounds we'll need to get rid of them permanently, including the one at vault 87." The Wanderer assured Bigsley; he had absolutely no interest in a dictatorship, too many long winded speeches. "Besides how many people are going become raiders when their bases are getting blown up from orbit."

"Well you blew up the generators but there are plenty of spare parts about, I guess they wanted to make sure they could fix them if anything happened to it, if we shift the small ship people onto it we can have it at minimum capacity in about a week also." The Wanderer nodded and sat in the captain's chair, literally staring off into space; things were going to get interesting very soon.

**(Citadel)**

The Great hall was completely silent. Gallows had explained three times what he had seen, but they still couldn't believe it. Gallows had tracked the Wanderer, Bigsley and all of the successful applicants to a site just north of the power station, after they reached an odd white object they all disintegrated in an orange haze, one group after another, then ten minutes later the object itself became enveloped in a blue light and ascended beyond the clouds, Gallows then investigated the area and just beyond the object site there was a corpse… an alien corpse.

"My god, what does this mean?" Tristan asked

"No, no way, it can't be true, he actually found it" Sarah said almost vacantly

"Found what Sarah?" Lyons asked

"There's an old terminal in the Citadel, with some files on it, he looked through it one time and said one of them talked about an alien crash landing, I told him that it was a mistake but he was certain that there was something out there… that we weren't alone."

"And now he has one of our scribes helping him, or these aliens do god knows what!" Rothchild shouted, he had always had a soft spot for Bigsley but thought that he needed to learn to follow orders, now he may have sent the boy into a horrible fate.

**(Living Quarters)**

Bigsley couldn't help but giggle as he lay in his bed, the living quarters had very odd stasis pods built for the alien's small frames but under Bigsley's instructions the techs managed to disassemble them and put two together to make it big enough for one person to sleep comfortably, they were still working to make enough but only four or five people had to do with regular mattresses on the floor for that night. He loved his bed, it was soft and clean, more than any bed in the wasteland can boast, but it took too much time to make, he only had twenty five people, he kept five people doing shifts on the bridge always, the sooner they figured that all out the sooner they could figure the rest out easily. He had his own private quarters and already it was filled with half assembled tech; rifles, arch-way components, they had even found food materialisers, pre-war delicacies were lovingly devoured among the crew and more amazing things were still being discovered. But trying to get the robots and death ray operational was going to leave him with no people left; he'll have to pull the weapon's detail just to keep bridge shifts covered. Hopefully they'll be able to get through the week, once the Wanderer makes his little grand entrance people will be begging to join and then they could upgrade from this skeleton crew. Bigsley smiled as he considered the wanderer's first words before entering the ship.

"It's good to be home."

**(Fort Independence)**

Protector Casdin at his desk looking at the suit of tesla armour he had gotten off of the Wanderer, it had been repainted with the outcast colours and was Casdin's favourite armour. He had been listening to the radio and didn't know what to think about this WRM of his, he had considered of offering him a position in the outcasts but then he joined the Brotherhood for that final Enclave offensive, he simply sighed, in the grand scheme of things it didn't really matter, in a few weeks, nothing in DC will. Casdin's terminal beeped as he received a message, it was short but definite.

Message Received and understood, Brotherhood command sending forces to bring war criminal: Elder Lyons to be brought to justice for complete disregard of the Codex. DC will then be harvested of technology and left.

The real Brotherhood was coming, and the DC was going to be left to fend for itself. It would seem that Lyons was the outcast now.


	4. The begginings of an army, and a war

**(Paradise Falls)**

The Wanderer had never liked the place, the slavers were obviously a reason to dislike the place themselves but their taste, ugh, just dirt, blood and skulls, typical raider bullshit. It used to be some shopping plaza, ironic (as many things are in the wasteland) that all that's changed (besides the terrible choice in décor) is the stock. Human beings and ghouls were paraded around a crowd as though they were brahmin; it was a mournful sight, well less mournful due to the fact that most of the slaves were actually raiders and Enclave remnants, courtesy of the Wanderer himself. Some were suspended in cages, others chained in lines, waiting for one of the repulsive buyers to make the highest offer.

"Good sirs and madams it is with great pleasure and pride that I now unveil a particularly stunning catch, pun intended" A tall African American man wearing a red suit addressed to the crowd. The Wanderer recognised him as Eulogy Jones, the leader of the slavers of Paradise Falls, he hated to admit it but Eulogy actually shared quite a likeness with himself. Eulogy tore a patchy blanket of one of the cages to reveal a completely armed Jackal pointing an alien atomizer at Eulogy's head; if the Wanderer had a camera to capture the moment his life would have been complete.

"I am quite stunning aren't I?" Jackal chucked as he kicked open the cage door. Every slaver in the entire area had a gun trained on Jackal within seconds, the only sound that could be heard was the slow clapping of the Wanderer as he strolled out of the crowd of perspective slave purchasers and up onto the make shift stage constructed in front of Eulogy's 'pad'.

"Well, I think I'd like to start the bidding at, hmm a song and a dance maybe? No? How about an alien corpse, got plenty of them." The Wanderer chuckled as he reached Jackal's side, examining him as though he was seriously inspecting a purchase. "Well Eulogy you do drive a hard bargain don't you? Okay my final offer." The Wanderer clicked his fingers and behind every single slaver a person wearing Chinese stealth armour appeared and put a knife to their throat. With another click over forty slavers hit the floor with blood pouring out of their necks. All that remained was the Wanderer and Eulogy, and approximately forty of the Wanderer's mercs.

"What the hell, are you doing you goddamn lunatic!" Eulogy spat, moving forward until Jackal forcefully put his atomizer against his head. "I thought we had a deal, we hit the raiders and you leave us be!"

"Quite so, and it's been very lucrative for both of us hasn't it? But sadly Mr Jones I'm afraid your… Services are no longer required, oh don't look so glum! Tell you what consider this your early retirement, and no other slavers to share the remaining loot with, lucky you! So I'm just going to go and my boys are going to lock you in for a bit until we have some distance between us, I just came to pick up one of your… Upstanding clients." Without another word the Wanderer and his mercs walked out after taking a snivelling bastard in a white suit with them. With the only door barred the confused clients along with an equally confused Eulogy Jones simply decided to wait until the crazy people left and it was safe to do the same.

**(Minefield)**

The Wanderer sat in a lawn chair with the tied up and gagged client and a pair of binoculars looking at Paradise Falls, the Wanderer put his index and middle finger to his ear and simply said.

"Do it." And two seconds later a magnificent column of purple light crashed down on Paradise falls. Jones, raider slaves and clients alike burned in an instant leaving nothing but black smudges among the ash and rubble of what used to be Paradise Falls, the shockwave travelled far slightly shaking the precarious half destroyed building that the Wanderer observed from. With a smile he cut the client loose and with a cheery tone said "now you run along and tell everybody you see… or you'll be next okay?" The Wanderer laughed as he heard the sound of the pathetic little man running and screaming. "Nothing quite like a little trip to the local market."

"This is GNR with an urgent news broadcast. You remember Paradise Falls children? Of course you do, well you're not going to in a few weeks seeing as the entire place has been wiped of the map, according a lone survivor the Lone Wanderer AKA Mr 101 after having ordered the killing of most of the slaver populous then ordered a gigantic orbital laser strike on the compound which resulted in its complete destruction. Okay little tip for you riotous ruffians out there, don't fuck with Mr 101, you may get a laser strike hitting you in the ass one morning. Seriously 101 I'm all for a little wasteland justice but isn't that a little harsh?"

**(Bridge)**

Bigsley was surprised at how well the death ray worked; even at minimal capacity it completely obliterated Paradise Falls. Bigsley felt a sense of accomplishment as the window monitor zoomed in on the destruction of the slavers, after this it would be the raiders, then the supermutants and then the people of the wasteland could have a little breather before the next catastrophe hit them like a sack of bricks.

"Was that really necessary?" Elliot asked as he watched the destruction on the opposite side of the captain's chair.

"Slaver are quite simply put, assholes, even if we did try to offer a peaceful solution they would have just fought or found some other way to screw over the people." Bigsley plainly responded. "Now we're rid of them and that survivor has spread the word of an extremely volatile Wanderer with an orbital laser, should give other trouble makers something to think about, eh?"

**(Fort Independence)**

Casdin was beside himself, orbital laser strikes? From a local! This wouldn't stand; the Brotherhood of steel is the only group wise enough to have such technology. Casdin may have had respect for the Wanderer but now he knew that this waste rat was playing with the kind of tech that could make the Brotherhood, and himself, truly great. There was no time to wait for the reinforcements from Lost Hills; Casdin was going to have to bring the fight to the Wanderer now.

**(Citadel)**

Elder Lyons sat at his terminal in silence, he had heard the reports, but he may have well just waited to listen to the news, just like the rest of the wasteland who undoubtedly know that there was truly a new power that could match the Brotherhood. He sat in silence knowing that he may have to face down one of the best soldiers he had ever seen. He sat in silence knowing that he may very well loose.

**(Bridge)**

Bigsley oversaw the restoration efforts with a vigour that he thought he had long since lost, he had the energy for every situation that arose and for once was optimistic about the future, that all ended when the hum of the teleportation matrix sounded and the Wanderer stepped in with the newest batch of recruits.

"Hey you're back I… would like to know what in the fuck you think you're doing!" Bigsley said in his vilest tone.

"Nice to see you again too Bigsley" Specialist Olin responded plainly, ever the ice queen.

"What? You said we needed more people to get this tech working so I went to people who know about tech." The Wanderer said defensively. Behind the Wanderer were three of the brotherhood outcasts. Morrill and McGraw stood in awe of the technology around them, Olin kept her icy composure as she examined the various terminals and pushed various buttons.

"You realise that you could have reduced generator heat for the death ray by forty precent by re-routing coolant from cryogenics right?" Olin queried in a superior tone.

"H-how did you know-"

"He briefed us on the way to the teleportation device" Olin said nodding to the Wanderer who looked genuinely scared as Bigsley threw him another venomous look.

"Doing that may have released the subjects from cryogenic comatose and we don't exactly want supermutants running around here do we?" Bigsley defended "Wait why am I explaining myself to this goddamn traitor!" Bigsley shouted at the Wanderer accusingly.

"Oh and if you're so loyal to Lyons why are you here then?"

"I- uh, that's different! I mean how can we trust you, you ditched Lyons and now Casdin; who's to say you won't just take all you can carry and bolt, or try to take over!" Bigsley smiled as he felt he was getting the upper hand but the Wanderer quickly interjected as he saw the aggravation rise in McGraw and Morrill.

"That's enough Bigsley, they were abandoned by Casdin and left for the supermutants, he's planning something big but we need to focus on restoring as much as we can before we can do anything about that. I know you guys have history and there is nothing I'd like to do more than sit back with some popcorn and watch you guys sort it out but until we get this place in order you're going to stow it! Bigsley Olin is going to help on the Bridge, deal with it, McGraw and Morrill if you'll follow me I'll show you to your squads." The Wanderer stopped before reaching the matrix to engineering and turned to Olin. "Don't bang him up to bad while I'm gone." Olin responded with a quick salute and Bigsley could have sworn he saw a slight redness in her cheeks, _oh this could be fun_ he thought to himself as he stored that little fact away for future exploitation.

McGraw and Morrill had said little when it became obvious that Casdin had given up hope on recovering them and the technology they had discovered from supermutants. It was pure luck that they were alive and they weren't about to complain about the change of leadership, but as they roamed the halls, spoke with the mercenaries they were to teach about energy weapons and eventually shape into some kind of soldiers they realised that they had signed on for something that they weren't being told about. The Wanderer was courteous and had a good sense of camaraderie with all of the people in his command but McGraw could see that he knew more than he was letting on and Morrill could sense that McGraw was sensing something off about the whole situation.

"Sir what do you make of all this?" Morrill asked genuinely when they had settled into a spacious room that was now the officer's quarters in the living quarters.

"Hard to say Morrill, and it's not 'sir' for you any more remember, you've got your own squad now." The two soldiers laughed at that. They looked out of the window into the stars and felt an anxiety come over them; any experienced soldier could tell you that intuition wasn't a thing to be casually ignored.

**(One Month Later)**

Things had fallen into a nice little routine, Bigsley and Olin would argue on the Bridge over things that barely mattered, Elliot had beaten his medics into shape, in some cases literally, McGraw and Morrill had taken their command and made it into something resembling a well-trained force, Jackal and Pitt were saddened to in different squads but still made great strides, becoming quite proficient soldiers with an impressive palate of skills, the ship had even taken civilian residents which Sally helped integrate into the ship as smoothly as possible, man and ghoul alike lived and worked aboard the Mother-Ship Zeta, slowly restoring it to full functionality while enjoying a safe life with food that actually didn't taste like ass and a plentiful supply of water thanks to the wondrous food materializers, even able to enjoy some recreational activities such as learning the ancient art of bushido from Toshiro Kago, something which Pitt took quite a liking to, even if he had to learn just by copying the movements the Samurai would show him. Today however was a serious day, an event of great importance weighed upon the Wanderer who now took on the mantle of Captain as well. The Captain sat in his chair which he had revolved to face his quarters at the back of the Bridge. He had his head resting on his clenched fist as his brow furrowed in deep contemplation.

"Okay, okay I think… I know what it should be." The Captain said definitively as all of the eyes in the Bridge watched him and all of the occupants of the ship listened through the P.A. system. "I choose… the black uniform" In front of the Captain was McGraw and Morrill. McGraw wore a black Enclave officer uniform with two white stripes on its arm to signify he was a commander, while Morrill wore a regulator duster with two black stars on his shoulder to signify the same thing. The Bridge nodded in agreement and Morrill looked somewhat saddened as he saluted and left to change into his new dress uniform. After scavenging the rest of the vault of technology (a task made far easier when there is more than three people to do it) a cache of winterised T-51b suits of power armour were found, making the small army of the WRM even more fearsome as they charged into battle as walking fortresses wielding devastating alien weaponry, soon after the raiders of the wasteland either died or decided it was time to retire, the supermutants were the only remaining threat to the average wastelander but the Brotherhood of steel who were now under much less stress from raider attacks were more than ready to combat the menace, this solidified a sort of tense truce between the two factions. The only wild card in the mix was the Outcasts, who had completely vanished from the map, Fort Independence was deserted and any report of Outcast patrols were usually unsubstantiated reports from chem addicts who had taken over the old raider camps.

"I think you made the right choice sir, Morrill never really had an eye for fashion" Olin commented as she leaned against a terminal behind the Captain's chair, she resisted the urge to throw something at Bigsley who insisted in making kissing noises whenever she spoke to the Captain, an act that provided no end of annoyance to Olin and no end of enjoyment for Bigsley. Picking up on this little display the Captain quickly ordered the Bridge personal back to work before the two began another verbal bout for dominance. Even though the air in the ship was light and joyful today was an important day. Morrill whose squad had become the infiltration and special operations division of the WRM was investigating reports of a newly established supermutant breeding ground in vault 112. There were about twenty people in total in a division; there were four divisions, regular army or RA which was headed by McGraw, infiltration and special operations or ISO which was headed by Morrill, medical which was headed by Elliot and technical which was headed by Bigsley, although Olin never missed an opportunity to declare how better she was suited for the position. The armed divisions are made of squads of around five. Each squad was identified by its division and phonetic alphabet letter. Jackal had exceeded in RA and so was put in Alpha squad and was identified as being an RA Alpha while Pitt who was competent but had not quite excelled was part of Bravo squad and was identified as being an ISO Bravo. Today was Pitt's chance to become and Alpha though as his squad was going to infiltrate the entrance to vault 112 and verify the supermutant's habitation of the vault and pave the way for the RA Alphas to clear the place out.

**(Weapons Lab)**

Pitt zipped up his Chinese stealth suit, marvelling at how quickly the tech division replicated the suit when they had first occupied the ship. He felt safe when he was in his suit, Jackal may be a fortress in his T-51b armour but he could be spotted from miles away in that clunky thing, Pitt was a ghost when he was in his suit and they never saw him coming, well most of the time, some of those supermutants are really perceptive… and bumping into a shopping trolley may have alerted them a bit. He shook his head and did a few small jumps to get his blood pumping. He noticed his squad leader coming back from the briefing, he was humourless guy who always seemed to be angry at someone, but when he crouched he damn near disappeared, one of the advantages of being short Pitt supposed. He wore his black dress uniform and didn't seemed to enjoy it at all, it was a size to big and made it look as though somebody had sucked fat out of him leaving large spaces of the suit free and ruffling, his arm had three white stripes on it signifying that he was a squad leader. Nobody dared laughed at him, even the Alphas, it took something special to lead a squad and a lot of supermutants died to determine who had that something special when the officers were chosen. Squad Leader Jackson as he was known or SL Jackson gathered the Pitt and the four other members of Bravo and relayed the briefing to them. Once they knew the specifics of the mission they collected their weapons, most went with atomizers including Pitt but the odd duck of the group chose to use a plasma pistol, he was a quiet kind of guy and Pitt could barely even remember his name, Smith he thought, everyone just called him Duck though, if he cared he didn't show it. Bravo quickly made their way to engineering where a re-routed matrix connected to a recently deployed beacon outside of vault 112, RA Alpha was already waiting for them, mole rat corpses were piled to one side of the garage entrance, what else were you going to do while you waited, might as well get some target practice. Pitt saw the names of all of the soldiers above their head as his visor scanned their suits with an advanced Friend/Foe program and displayed their name, division and squad, as Jackal approached him he saw in green computer font letters: Jackal/RA/Alpha, Pitt tapped his visor twice and all that remained was Jackal's name.

"About time, we were going to cook these things up and have a barbeque you were taking so long." Jackal said patting his friend's back.

"Hey it takes time to look this good." Pitt said running his hand over his helmet. The two boys made their reunion short as Jackson stared at them, even with his visor covering his face he was a scary bastard.

"Okay Bravo play it by the book, activate stealth!" Jackson ordered as he tapped his chest just below his heart, as he did so he was replaced by a lighted shimmering which soon vanished as he moved silently into the garage, the rest of Bravo did the same and in the same quiet movements made their way into the garage. Pitt had almost forgotten how dirty the world was, two weeks living the good life on the Zeta could do that to you. Not even the radroaches noticed their entry, only skittering about when the door leading to the vault inexplicably opened by itself. They descended into the cold bowls of the vault and Pitt began to feel a chill run down his spine, the kind he felt when somebody was watching him.

**(Author's note)**

**Hi Guys sorry this chapter took so long but I really struggled with ideas for this one. If you think I've gotten to military please tell me, I hadn't planned to take that direction, but then I didn't plan to use Mother-Ship Zeta either. Please leave a review if you see any errors, have any ideas you'd like to throw at me or just want comment, I read every review I'm given and appreciate all of them. **


	5. The Lost Lamb

**(Vault 112)**

Pitt felt the chill of the vaults cold wall surround him, it felt empty, wrong. Pitt had heard of the vaults of course, he had always figured that they were like underground kingdoms, but this place just felt like a crypt. The door had already been opened, an alarm blazing to warn the non-existent residents that their sanctuary was vulnerable to the world, this was good, masked their presence even more, but they wouldn't be able hear each other either, they couldn't use hand signals due to the stealth signals so they moved in signal file and focused on the shimmer in front of them, when the person in front stopped so did they. Pitt instantly knew something was wrong, the halls were clean and orderly, robo-brains roamed the halls tending to the systems and electronics, supermutants mark their territory with blood and bodies and they would have destroyed the robots on sight. Pitt's anxiety grew even further as he swore that a camera was following their movements. The team trudged on regardless, making their way ever downwards until they reached a room full of bizarre pods. The pods were completely blacked out and whatever was inside, if anything couldn't be seen, each pod connected to what seemed like a central computer system that spanned from the floor to the roof in a tangle of metal and cables. Jackson deactivated his stealth and the rest of Bravo followed suit, each member fanned out and examined one of the computers, just as they activated them the computers exploded in a bright white light. Pitt was launched behind one of the pods and hit the wall with a sickening crack; he felt a warm sensation coming from the back of his head and assumed that he was bleeding inside of his helmet, just perfect. He fought to stay conscious as he tapped his visor four times which sent an emergency signal to the Alpha squad, Pitt's last moments of consciousness was watching the darkened pods open to reveal troops wearing black and red tesla armour. They checked the arms of the stunned soldiers' suits to see the white stripes that determined rank. One of the soldiers checked Pitt and promptly yelled to another.

"Sir this one has the most stripes, he must be the commander!"

"Good, good, execute the rest and get back in the pods, they must have reinforcements, they won't be able to bypass the pod locks." Pitt fell into darkness as he heard the sound plasma weapons being fired only to be replaced by a sickening silence.

**(One year prior, The Pitt)**

The Pitt was full of screaming as the slaves enacted their bloody revolt. Gunshots and the whir of auto axes played like a deadly symphony of pain, the boy was only sixteen but he fought with a ferocity that only came from having nothing left to loose. He was covered in blood, raider, trog he didn't even care anymore; he just kept swinging his axe and running, always running. He had been part of the distraction for Werner and the stranger to do whatever it was that they needed to do to free the slaves. He had had a normal life once he and his brother, poor Billy, turned into a turned and slaughtered by some prick scavenging steel. He was too tired to feel anything, all he could do was hope that every fresh splash of blood on his face was another step towards freedom, not that he had anything left to go back to. Just as it looked like the raiders were going to win the floodlights all around uptown began flicker and shut off, and as darkness fell a sea of roaring crashed through the city as the trog crawled through windows and down walls. The boy laughed despite himself, the slaves were never going to win, but the trogs just might. He dropped his axe and fell to his knees, he couldn't move any more, too tired, too empty to go on. As a savage began to charge at him he closed his eyes and felt the darkness seep into him.

**(The Bridge)**

The Captain sat in his chair and looked out to the stars in silence, as did the rest of the Bridge, most of Bravo squad dead, and one missing; this was a disaster, a disaster that must have taken some planning. The Captain broke from his thoughts and saw that all of the eyes of the Bridge were on him, silently expecting a response, expecting him to be the leader they needed.

"There will be time to grieve later; right now we have a soldier missing and an enemy that needs to be taught the consequences of crossing the WRM. Bigsley tell me we had the tracking devices in the suits working before we sent them out." The Captain asked stoically.

"Yes but the boy's isn't functioning, I can only assume that they, whoever in god's name that is expected something like that and disabled it, needless to say they would have to have had some kind of experience with advanced technology to do that."

"Probably Outcasts" Olin stated coolly

"Probably" Bigsley agreed

"Okay if it's the Outcasts then they would base somewhere underground where the laser couldn't get them, and it would have to be able to accommodate their technology… oh they would be short sighted enough for that wouldn't they?" The Captain mumbled, obviously lost in thought.

"Feel free to use your social skills any time now" Bigsley grumbled impatiently

"If I know Casdin and I do, he probably wants to make sure that if he doesn't have the tech nobody does, now what would you use to destroy what they probably think to be an orbital strike satellite?"

**(Unknown location)**

Pitt woke up in a dank metal room tied to an office chair; all he had on was his under shirt and boxer shorts, his head ached like a bitch and the bright light burned his vision. Stepping into the light a man in red and black tesla armour approached Pitt and grabbed him by the hair, forcing him to look into the light.

"You're obviously not a commander like my men thought but you'll do. For an entire month my men have been scouring the wastes looking for your base of operations, we are not stupid or careless, so please enlighten me as to why we can't find it." The man said in a cold voice made even more daunting by the mechanised voice changer in his helmet.

"Maybe your guys need glasses; I mean they mistook me for an officer, how perceptive could they be?" Pitt offered innocently, a response which was rewarded by the man slamming Pitt's head against the metal wall.

"Let's try that again"

"Oh joy"

**(Cryogenics Laboratory)**

Elliot had heard the report and was just as nervous the rest of the ship, he was thankful that they had taken civilian passengers, attending to them was a full time job and one that helped him keep his mind off of the situation. He moved his small torch from one of his patient's eye to the next, satisfied that it's dilation and reaction times were normal, well normal enough for a ghoul he wrote a prescription and sent him, or her he had trouble telling sometimes, to the other side of the lab where a makeshift chemist had been set up. The advances that they were finding here was ground breaking, the advanced alien bio-gel that Elliot had learned to make so long ago was being perfected to take away radiation and heal most injuries and even some simple sicknesses, he was astounded at how self-sufficient the ship was, powered by space's natural radiation it could materialise everything a community could possibly need, he almost regretted that all of the ship's alien crew had been killed, such an advanced civilization could have taught them so much. Unless their reliance on technology gave them their fragile bodies, what if they were actually humans who had simply become too reliant on technology and they were actually experimenting on people so they could somehow regain their hum forms! Elliot shuddered and forced the thought out of his head, he had always had an active imagination; maybe it was due to his solitary childhood on his family estate? He continued treating his patients as he began to drift away on thoughts of his old life, vaguely hearing Sally complain about not getting a lollipop from him after a check-up. It wasn't until he heard a thunderous crash coming from the hanger bay that he began to pay attention to what was happening around him.

**(Hanger Bay)**

Olin had taken over the small ship analysis. She had managed to figure out how to engage basic systems such as life-support and gravity but for the life of her she just couldn't figure out how to fly the damn things. She had been sitting in one of the saucers as the crew had dubbed them that had been docked in between what she called the docking towers, large towers not unlike tesla coils which seemed to be able to keep the saucers in place through an electro-magnetic manipulation field. Sitting in the pilot's chair she examined the controls inside of the ship, which was nothing. The only thing inside of the saucer was a chair and a bright blue strip on what the techs called the dashboard. Despite her calm and cool demeanour she was becoming increasingly frustrated at her lack of progress, she could just picture Bigsley's snide comment's if she didn't produce anything soon, in an act absolutely unlike her she slammed her hands on the blue strip and pictured flying it right into that smug bastards face. To her shock, the saucer shot forward and violently hit the edge of the electro-magnetic field sending it back into place after the docking towers expelled some static electricity which sent more than a few techs flying into the wall and each other. Sitting in absolute shock she gingerly put her hands back on the thin blue strip and pictured the ship moving slowly up, an action that the saucer obediently copied. It was a full two hours before Olin stopped boasting at Bigsley that day.

**(Robot Assembly)**

Bigsley had been determined to upgrade the robots since Olin figured out how to work the ships (by accident Bigsley would argue) she had been nothing but an even bigger pain in his ass. The drones were pathetically weak with their rotating claws they were barely fit enough to mow a lawn, not like there were any of those left and the drones were too unpredictable, they shoot out a ball that bounces around a few times and explodes, unfit for field duty but not for much longer if Bigsley had anything to say about it. He toyed with the drones first as they held more potential, first he deconstructed the shell to examine the intricate electronics within, the first thing he learned that the cannon that fired the energy balls was actually a miniature reactor that powered the entire robot, after very carefully removing that he discovered that the rest of the robot was basically power distribution from the reactor with the exception of the head which acted as a friend/foe target finder. The real work was to be done on the cannon itself. Bigsley examined it carefully and looked for ways to up the power or make the energy output more stable, in some crazy sense of irony as Bigsley examined the cannon it slipped out of his hands and fell on a settings button, the result was instead of an unpredictable ball of energy, a deadly beam of blue light, not unlike the death ray shot out, nearly killing a passing scientist who quite understandably soiled himself. Bigsley looked at the cannon bemused and thought about many 'great' scientists really made their discoveries this way.

"Okay so the aliens really liked death beams, good to know." He sighed, the drones should be enough artillery support maybe he could make the others into robotic repair units. Well this should make things interesting for Casdin Bigsley thought as a smile crept across his face.

**(Unknown location, three hours later)**

Pitt was coughing blood out and couldn't see past the swelling of his left eye, his arms had been broken and he was pretty sure he had a few cracked ribs.

"H-hey I really didn't mean any offence by the mother crack, I'm sure she's a very expensive prostitute." Pitt weakly chuckled. Casdin who had taken off his helmet took Pitt's hand violently broke his index finger. Pitt's screams were soon replaced by weak laughter which seemed to aggravate Casdin even further.

"What the fuck's so damn funny you goddamn waste rat?" He hissed in frustration

"Y-you actually think t-that stupid little tesla armour can save you d-don't you? News flash you DUMB MOTHERFUCKER NOTHING CAN SAVE YOU FROM HIM!" Pitt snarled in an equally venomous tone

"You think you precious little wanderer, is going to what? Swoop in and save the day? He's left you to rot and even if he hasn't there's no way he can find you." Casdin sneered in a self-superior, and seemed to be thoroughly satisfied with himself.

"Oh Hahaha you t-think I'm talking about the Wanderer, oh you dumb bastard Hahaha, you got bigger problems than him, you got the Jackal nipping at your heels now." Casdin punched Pitt square in the jaw and even he was a little disturbed at the fact that Pitt just kept laughing. "He's going to tear you apart limb by limb and piss in your eye sockets as you're just about to die!"

**(Six Months prior)**

Pitt had been in the Capital Wasteland for a month now and he still couldn't believe how big the Mall was. He had been pickpocketing his way away from the Pitt and had found himself wandering into DC. One day he had tried to pick the pocket of a man in black combat armour, after taking a beating from the man he had been offered a job, apparently impressing him for getting so close unnoticed. Pitt didn't have any other options so he agreed. He was given a uniform a size too big for him and a shitty 10mm sub machine gun, Pitt assumed that the others were screwing with him, telling him that he was no better than the piece of shit gun he was using, he couldn't say he particularly cared at the time but after a while he began to see himself in the abused weapon, after two weeks of obsessive repair he had made it into a weapon to be proud of, and was so very proud. It was this weapon that caught the eye of a certain scavenger who seemed to have a stick up his ass about Talon and a temper (and gun) to do something about it. Pitt's fellows were down before they knew they were dead, but Pitt was always ready for some prick to try and drag him back to a life of slavery, it was a plus that it kept him alert enough to duck when somebody shot at him. For three days Pitt and the scavenger played a game of cat and mouse in the ruins of the nation's capital, if Pitt hadn't have sustained that wound from the savage trog in the Pitt he may have just won, but the little game ended with Pitt on his knees in front of the Capital building staring at some other kid in leather armour pointing a 10mm pistol at him. Pitt had been shot in the leg beforehand by the scavenger but he wasn't going to die from a 10mm pistol shot that was just insulting. Pitt threw dirt in his eyes and the two wrestled until they both fell down the concrete steps and had to run away, lest the supermutants take them both. Pitt had been enthralled by the stranger ever since, eventually he found him selling scrap at Rivet city and the dynamic duo of Jackal and Pitt was born. Pitt never spoke of the three day bout between himself and Jackal and Jackal never confirmed whether that was him or not but Pitt held those days as the greatest fun in his life, surviving just wasn't fun unless you had somebody to boast to about it and to hear you're witty quips.

**(Bridge, two days later)**

Everybody on the Bridge stood at attention and waited for the Captain to give his orders. It was three simple words, but they invoked hell for the Outcasts.

"Make it so" The Captain ordered, and the next few minutes were filled with hectic activities. Pilots who had barely been trained were preparing themselves for full warfare, beacons were being launched with all of RA and their new artillery drones beaming down and ISO equipped themselves with gauss rifles, each of them thirsty for some revenge for their comrades, eager to bring back the lost lamb of their dysfunctional little family. It was war, and it was glorious.

**(Fort Constantine)**

The fort was in an uproar, out of nowhere beacons began to rain down from the sky and then a sea of lasers covered anything in black and red. RA stormed the fort in T51-b power armour with alien disintegrators, they took no prisoner's and never missed a shot, leading the assault was McGraw who called in the locations for the artillery bots as they were now known and kept the squads moving in perfect harmony, if he had any qualms about killing his former comrades he didn't show it, executing people who intended no harm was not part of the codex, not part of his morals. Morrill led the ISO as they sniped any elevated targets, rocket soldiers and other snipers fell like flies as the invisible reapers took their targets down, one shot, one kill, but it was the saucers who truly rained devastation, one minute they were shooting death rays at anybody stupid enough not to spread out, the next they were covered in a stealth field placing themselves in the right location to continue their destruction. It was exactly five minutes and twenty one seconds before the exterior forces of the Outcasts were obliterated. The saucers withdrew to the mother ship and all of the beacons were beamed back with another being launched outside of the CO's quarters for the extraction of Pitt.

**(Fort Constantine, interior)**

Pitt heard the explosions above and smiled contently; his face was covered in bruises and cuts where Casdin pushed his face in the chain link fence door, Pitt had discovered he was being held in an old reception desk or something in some kind of bunker. Outcasts ran up to the surface in a panic, something Pitt noticed with delight was that they didn't come back. Pitt decided now was probably time to leave before he overstayed his welcome, he began jump up and down bringing the chair he was tied to with him. After a while the chair broke and Pitt managed to slip his hands out, his hands were still tied behind his back but he didn't have the strength to do anything about it. With great strains Pitt got to his feet and made his way for the stairs when Casdin came bolting down, his armour had a burnt hole in it and he was bleeding badly.

"Just thought I'd put some drinks out for the guests" Pitt said with a crashing feeling in his chest. Casdin simply grabbed him by the hair and dragged him downstairs. The trip was short but violent as Casdin pulled Pitt into a ruined bathroom and closed the door. "Hey at least buy me a drink first Pitt said. Casdin was not amused.

"Just shut up!" Casdin yelled as he hit Pitt with the butt of his plasma pistol. Casdin held Pitt up and put the gun to his head as they faced the door. The sound of heavy footsteps sounded throughout the hallway, Casdin pushed the gun against Pitt's head even harder as the footsteps grew fainter and fainter, Casdin began to quietly laugh, and it sounded evil and pained. Casdin grabbed Pitt's hair once more and began to drag Pitt behind him. Casdin opened the bathroom door and was met by the butt of Jackal's rifle. Casdin shrieked and fell back, but Jackal descended on him like a vulture and tore off Casdin's helmet. Jackal began to repeatedly beat Casdin with his helmet, once, twice, three times and he just kept going and going, eventually Casdin stopped screaming and then his head just became pulp, meat and blood left for the roaches. Pitt was on his back staring at the ceiling as his friend came into sight; he had put his helmet back on and stood above Pitt like a sculpture.

"What took you so long?" Pitt groaned

"It takes time to look this good." Jackal responded running his hand over his helmet, Casdin's blood covered half of the winterised suit of armour, it was a beautiful sight for Pitt, who lost consciousness chuckling.


	6. The Trifecta

**Hey guys sorry about the wait, but since I've started TAFE I've had so little time to commit to this story, so much so that I had to cut this chapter short, I have been fighting some serious writer's block on this one and I hope the story hasn't suffered for it, but the WRM will live on! I will finish! P.S. thank you to everyone who has added this story to your favourites, it's the reason I am determined to finish this story. Please feedback, ideas etc. you know the drill. **

**(Captain's Quarters)**

The Captain had called a meeting of the WRM leadership in his personal quarters to discuss the grave matter of the Outcast situation.

"Ha flush!" The Captain said as he laid his poker cards on the makeshift poker table in his room. Elliot and Bigsley groaned as the Captain took the large of caps and added to the small pile in front of him.

"Damn it, how the hell do you beat a crazy person at cards!" Elliot moaned as he counted his dwindling pile of caps. "Anyway, Pitt's stable but he's slipped into a coma, remarkable that he's still alive, it's just a matter of waiting at this point really."

"Say what you want that crazy routine is an act to cheat me out of my caps" Bigsley grumbled as he took a shot of whisky which the Captain had laid out for the occasion. "Well in any case the saucers are preforming spectacularly and the robots are doing just as well. Only thing is we can't reproduce the saucers like we can the robots, the design is just far too complex."

"Okay first, what the hell are you to talking about? I'm not crazy, I'm lovably quirky, secondly; Elliot I want regular reports sent to me via the newly installed terminals, I want to know when that boy wakes up, I'll be damned if we lose all of Bravo squadron on one botched mission. Bigsley if memory serves me correctly we have forty two of the saucers in the hangar space? Right then get Olin and a crew to dismantle one and see if they can't reverse engineer it. So Elliot the deal is yours correct?" The three men continued their game and their discussion, if Casdin's terminal was right and the original Brotherhood was coming to town a plan would needed to be formed.

**(Cryogenics Lab)**

Jackal sat next to Pitt who laid perfectly still, medical tubes running out of his arms, various machines beeping around him. Elliot had taken it upon himself to treat Pitt which gave Jackal some measure of reassurance, but seeing his friend like this still gave him chills. Jackal hadn't left the chair for… he didn't even know how long, there were no clocks there and seeing the sun while in space didn't give him much indication of the time. His squad would occasionally visit him, partly to pay respects to Pitt, mostly to check up on him, Sally brought him food, talking about the nutrition lessons Elliot gave her, at one point even Toshiro Kago came by, seeing his pupil in such a way seemed to sadden the samurai, who's normal stoic face seemed slightly softer and sullen, who brought a pillow for Jackal to sit on, making the cold steel chair slightly more comfortable.

"You know Mr Elliot really knows what he's doing" Sally casually said as she sat in a chair opposite Jackal, kicking her legs as they dangled above the ground while she stared at Pitt with a childish fascination at the battered boy. "One time, before the Captain was the Captain he got really mangled up, something about his brain, Mr Elliot fixed him up and he's been really happy ever since." Jackal was interested at what Sally said; maybe he was just desperate to be distracted from the mangled form of his friend lying just inches in front of him.

"What was he like before?" Jackal quietly asked

"Kinda like you, he didn't really talk much, always looked at stuff like he was thinking about what they were made of or how he could use it, I think he was sad about something but he never talked about it, and he was really scary when he was fighting the aliens. Not at all like the radio makes him sound like, but I still like the show, it's even better than Captain Cosmos!"

"Have you ever seen such a lazy girl in your entire life I wonder?" The Captain chuckled as the two jumped at the sound of his deep voice. "You young lady were supposed to report to Olin ten minutes ago, you're the one who asked to start an apprenticeship with her. I'd hurry along now before she decides to hunt you down." The Captain laughed as a very flustered Sally rushed out of the lab and took her place besides Pitt and simply sat with his right leg on his left knee as he stared at Pitt. "So how are doing kid?" he finally said after ten minutes of silent contemplation.

"I've been better" Jackal mumbled

"Yes I know the feeling; it's never easy seeing a friend you've fought alongside with so… helpless"

"Did they make It, your friend I mean?"

"Yes"

"How did it happen?"

"Well I could tell you but why don't you hear glamorous version first, I believe Elliot had a radio installed for the waiting patients to listen to and you can decide if you want to hear the boring version yourself." With that the Captain took his leave, leaving a confused Jackal to find the control for the radio without pressing a button that would kill someone.

"Hello Capital Wasteland and welcome to G.N.R! It has been crazy in our big old wasteland as of late children and here to keep you up to date is the news. Reports of the Fort Constantine palaver is somewhat varied due to a lack of up close witnesses but what we have established is that the WRM and Outcasts have butted heads, with the WRM coming out on top, scattered reports say that bright shining lights could be seen for miles in the direction of the secluded fort, it has yet to be confirmed what made the light but in a surprising turn of events an official statement was sent to yours truly by the WRM head of technology Restoration Chief Bigsley, the pre-recorded statement shall now be played for you, stay tuned kiddies this is important!"

"Hello people of DC I Restoration Chief Bigsley of the WRM am here to tell you that the incident between the Outcasts has been resolved and that there is no need for panic. But all citizens are to avoid both Fort Independence and Fort Constantine while WRM conducts a clean-up effort to ensure that no hazardous materials can harm or be used to harm civilians, penalties for ignoring this warning can be anywhere from imprisonment to being shot on sight, we thank you for your cooperation and remind you that we act in the interest of your defence."

"Well you heard him kiddies steer clear of Fort Independence and Constantine or risk a laser in the ass! Now back to our regular programing."

"You're listening to the adventures of the Lone Wanderer played by knight sergeant Wilks of the GNR detachment of the Brotherhood of steel, today's episode: The sacrifice.

"Damn and here I thought that detestable Col. Autumn was my biggest problem." The Wanderer Cursed as alarms rang throughout Project Purity.

"God damn cowards can't even loose like men sir!" A robotic voice grumbled in a military like tone

"Quite right Sergeant RL-3, quite right indeed."

"There's no time to for bad mouthing, somebody needs to go in there and get this thing going!" the familiar breathy voice of the actor playing Sarah Lyons said with urgency.

"Hmm, well this is a pickle, but never fear I will go in and save the day!"

"But you'll die!"

"Maybe my dear, but if I don't do this, the wasteland dies, my father gave everything to stop that, it would simply be bad form for me not to follow" The Wanderer chuckled gravely.

"I'll never forget you, you brave man."

"It was an honour miss Lyons, Sergeant."

"Sir this soldier is proud to have met you"

"Well this is it do or die!"

"Tune in next time to hear season two of the Lone Wanderer's adventures: a journey to Point Lookout."

Jackal had fallen asleep in his chair; head resting on his arms, arms on the table which Pitt had his deep sleep on. Elliot walked by and put a blanket on Jackal, nodding his head as he knew this was going to be the first of many nights spent in this cold lab.

**(Citadel)**

Sarah and the Pride had been sent out to thin the supermutant numbers a bit, try to remind the people that the Brotherhood still existed. Lyons couldn't deny that the WRM got results, raiders, supermutants… and now the outcasts; one by one DC was being… tamed, the people eagerly listened to GNR for news of this new superpower led by the legend of DC, forgetting that the Brotherhood delivered their water, fought off the supermutants while they slept and were the last line of defence when the Enclave came to take over, it would seem that the Brotherhood was becoming as useless as Lyons himself felt.

"Liberty Prime is coming along well enough, the body is functional but it's the software that's proving to be difficult, as hard as we try we just can't seem to create a working replacement for the communist hating personality, but the rest is coming along all right."

"Good, good." Lyons sat back in his chair, for the first time in a very long time he was beginning to feel that the end was in sight, for good or for ill; the brotherhood was finally going to get its respite. The conversation was abruptly ended when a young scribe broke into Lyons' chambers.

"Sir it, it's the western Brotherhood, they've come in force and are demanding you stand down immediately!" The scribe stood there awkwardly as both Lyons and Rothchild simply sighed, two old men who knew that they would have to answer for helping people eventually.

"Well that's not very convenient" Rothchild grumbled. "I guess we'll just have to make do with the anti-communist propaganda for a bit longer"

**(Fort Bannister)**

The Western Brotherhood had no problem occupying the abandoned fort, once upon a time it was the base of the Talon Company, long since dead, it was now buzzing with activity, men and women in T51-B power armor and red scribe robes zipping about, fortifying, restoring, preparing. They arrived in vertibirds, disintegrating anybody unfortunate enough to stumble near them, raider and wastelander alike, cut down to avoid premature detection. Inside a young man barely twenty five sat smugly on a chair as he watched the people pass by, he wore blue robes identical to Lyons'. He was Elder (ironic) Sebastian Mason, one of the most brutal members of the entire Brotherhood of steel, one part fanatic, two parts gangster and whole lot of crazy thrown into the mix. Born to a devoted paladin Sebastian inherited the basic level brainwashing that all members are subjected to, but Sebastian was far more interested in the 'true owners of the world' part, where most simply saw technology as theirs by right Sebastian though 'why not everything else' an attitude that fuelled his historic rise through the ranks, bribes, extortion, blackmail, murder and so much more led him to this point. His arrogance was tempered by his intelligence, he knew Lyons would not simply lie down and die, he was preparing for a single attack that would wipe them out in a single stroke, and after that he would turn his attention towards the WRM, their technology would be useful in asserting dominance back west.

**(Captain's Quarters)**

The Captain heard the message sent to Lyon's brotherhood through a listening device he had ISO plant for him; he leaned back in his chair and sighed. He knew the Brotherhood was falling apart piece by piece, with every catastrophe they were only weakened and now the people he fought alongside was facing complete destruction.

"I hope I didn't forget anything at the Citadel, damn I'm never seeing that laser pistol again am I?"

He turned to a newly installed monitor in his room and saw a young man in blue robes sitting smugly in a chair as what appeared to be subordinates scurried about doing all of the work. One of the subordinates addressed him as elder Mason, something which the Captain found a little ironic.

"McGraw would you be so kind as to report to my quarters please? We have another war to plan"


	7. Autmn Ends

**(Cryo lab)**

Jackal had fallen asleep to quite rumble of voices in the makeshift clinic, Elliot zipped from bed to bed, table to table, asking, diagnosing, treating and on a very bad day consoling; in the many days Jackal had spent by Pitt's bed he watched Elliot with growing fascination, he knew his trade and he knew it well, as he ran the clinic he dealt with pretty bad injuries, mainly when a serious situation called for him to go planet side for onsite treatment, Jackal being an Alpha knew what those kinds of injuries could be like, supermutants weren't exactly friendly, but despite that the only deaths suffered was the loss of Pitt's unit, Jackal used to think that was because they had the best tech and people working for them, now he realised it was just the people, people like Elliot. Elliot always zipped about with a smile, always had some crackpot theory to blurt out and make Sally laugh, always knew how to treat what, and never lost his cool. Jackal spent his life killing, because he wanted to survive, because he was angry, to be a hero, to be a soldier, as he looked at his friend's limp comatose body, all of the medical advances of an alien ship and all he could do was wait, it made every act of violence he had ever done and seen seem… pointless, empty. Jackal was awoken to the sound of screams, one of the labourers, a ghoul called Hollow was frantically brought in as he violently convulsed as blood began to pour out of a bullet wound he sustained from a supermutant on his trip to visit Underworld. Jackal ran to the ghoul's side and quickly used a nearby hand towel to put pressure on the wound, the other medics quickly used medical instruments developed from the healing arch-ways of the ship to graft the skin together, the small flash light like tools quickly healed the skin, but Hollow still looked bad, and for a ghoul that's saying something, the medics were at a loss, and gave each other panicked looks, Jackal without thinking tore open the black duffle bag he kept beside Pitt's bed and grabbed a bottle of irradiated water, he thanked god he was too lazy to get rid of his old things and carefully poured the water into the ghouls mouth, the radiation did it's work, healing the ghouls screwed up physiology enough to give Elliot enough time to use a more effective form of radiation therapy when one of the medics tracked him down and told him what had happened.

"Smart thinking kid, despite what I supposedly 'taught' my little flock of geniuses here, you were the only one to realise radiation heal up ghouls better than any stimpack, you saved this guy's life Dr Jackal" Elliot chuckled as he slapped Jackal on the back. Jackal stood there for exactly forty seven seconds before he decided he wanted to help more.

**(Megaton)**

The Wanderer's house had been turned into an outpost for the WRM, the radio equipment and (scary) amount of stockpiled weaponry inside of the inconspicuous ramshackle house made it ideal for the ISO to use as a planet side base to survey the wasteland, not to mention Megaton was the largest trading city outside of the city proper, not keeping an eye on it would be crazy. SL Bronson was the head of Charlie squad and commander of the covert base of operations. Charlies filled the support roles in the WRM, in RA and Technical, they piloted and maintained the saucers respectively, in ISO they were the spies, they roamed the waste just as the Wanderer did, reporting the happenings of the wasteland back to Bronson via radio transmissions with their scavenged pip-boys from Vault 112, while helping the communities and people of the wasteland, they only physically reported in to the house for assignments, they wore no uniform, and avoided the other factions, any agent (as they were known) could choose to mentor a wastelander and make them an honorary member of the WRM, if the apprentice showed potential, then they would be officially inaugurated into the WRM as a full agent, in this respect the Charlie squad was very independent and separated from the ISO, they only took orders from their SL or the Captain himself, were responsible for obtaining their own weapons and armour (alien technology and stealth suits tended to stick out) and were far more numerous than the other divisions; it had only been a few months since the WRM had been formed and yet Charlie squad had at least forty agents (at least half of which with apprentices) across the entire wasteland, all of them, wanderers in their own right, legends whispered by some, disregarded by most even among the mother-ship. If the Captain was right, and he had always been up to now, then every single one of them was needed to combat this new heavily armed Brotherhood.

**(Cryo Lab, three days later)**

Pitt's head felt like shit, his eyesight was blurred, there was a ringing in his head and it hurt to move, but as his head began make sense of his memories he remembered he was lucky to be alive. He was in the Cryo Lab, the clinic, which now sported a neon sign which helpfully said 'clinic', he sat up very slowly and waved off the medics who tried to get him to lie back down, he examined his chest and saw faint surgical scars here and there, he chuckled as he thought they would be good for chatting up a girl, no sooner than he did this did he see Jackal sprint up to him full speed; To Pitt's surprise Jackal was sporting a wasteland surgeon's outfit and a med kit hung around his shoulder.

"New fashion on the ship?" Pitt groaned, it hurt to talk, that was going kill him he just knew it. Pitt's surprise soared to new heights as Jackal crashed into a full on hug with him. Pitt groaned in pain but laughed as he returned the hug.

"Ha! I knew it, Elliot was so sure that it would take you weeks to wake up, but I knew you were way stronger than that! Oh and you owe me fifty caps Leslie!" Jackal shouted in triumph, as one of the more attractive medics grudgingly parted with half of her pay for the week.

"How long have I been out? And who in god's name are you?" Pitt said with a smile as he took in this new Jackal.

"Huh? Oh right I was still RA when you decided to take a nap."

"You left RA!"

"Yeah, after what happened, I just kind of lost my taste for it I guess, had enough death, just felt tired you know? Well I hung around here for a bit and-"

"A bit? Try four days straight, god you smelled rank" Leslie shouted as she changed one of the patient's bandages across from them.

"Yes thank you Leslie your input is not required here right now! So yeah four days and I just started to help around a bit and next thing I know I've gone from RA badass to doctor Jackal"

"That's medic Jackal, I think you mean you know kind of like a nurse because you're not a doctor yet"

"Woman, I will put psycho in your coffee and watch you get demoted to toilet maintenance if you don't shut up, oh no offence Hollow" Jackal said as the new clinic janitor, the ghoul called Hollow who had been the start of Jackal's medical career shuffled past with a mop and a hurt expression. "He's going to give me that look for days now isn't he?"

"I hope so" Leslie chuckled; the little argument was broken up by Pitt's heavy laughter at the whole scene in front of him. The three went (slowly) to Pitt's quarters and filled him in on what had happened while he was out, Pitt was saddened about his squad, but Jackal and Leslie managed to keep the mood light. Elliot watched them go with a smile as he tended to other patients, until he realised that Jackal and Leslie were the only medics on duty to assist Elliot and the two other doctors on call, for his medical genius, it took him two hours to realise they were still on duty, if he wasn't so adamant on not letting people realise his screw up, he might have been displeased with them.

**(The Bridge, two days later)**

The Captain had been organising invasion plans on fort Bannister for the last three days now and nothing was looking good. Mason had technology that put the DC Brotherhood to shame; the bunker entrance was protected by four gauss beam turrets, reinforced sentry units and at least a dozen regular t51-b power armoured soldiers, and god knows what they've crammed inside since they fried the camera one of the agents placed before being killed. Things were bleak but not hopeless, they had effectively trapped themselves in an underground bunker, if worse came to worse they could lay siege to the fort and starve them out.

"Sir I've just gotten a report that the west coast brotherhood has just taken over Tenpenny Tower and killed the ghoul residents, and have already fortified the abandoned Evergreen Mills encampment." One of the terminal techs reported as they listened to their modified telemarketer headset.

"OH COME ON! That's just not fair! Alright do we have any spare agents to send to Tenpenny Tower and Evergreen Mills?"

"Uh it would seem we only have one agent spare at the moment" the tech said nervously. The Captain sat back in his chair and thought for a moment, after a minute he seemed to have decided on something that had been bothering him.

"Send the agent to Evergreen Mills, tell them to look for those damn turrets, that seems to be the only thing they have that can pose a challenge to the saucers, I have something to do, Bigsley, you have the Bridge." Everyone saluted as the Captain left for the matrix and continued to receive and send reports as Bigsley reviewed the agent's reports.

**(The Clinic)**

Pitt had been making a fast recovery thanks to Elliot and Jackal, so much so he had taken to helping around the clinic until he got reassigned to the field, it was fun for the most part, but Pitt was itching for action, no many how many covert suggestions Jackal dropped him about switching to medical. He was running medical supplies to the doctor's when the Captain walked in.

"Well, we aren't going to have two switches into medical this week are we?" the Captain chuckled as walked in, patting Pitt on the back.

"No sir! Eager to get back out there sir!" Pitt said with a salute, it was all very military, until Elliot started to snicker at the Captain being referred to as 'sir'. The Captain gave Elliot an evil smile and said something about a strip poker game he had with one of the medics, Pitt didn't know what the hell strip poker was but it shut Elliot up pretty quickly. The Captain invited Pitt to his quarters and they spent the rest of their conversation there.

"Well first let me say, we're all glad to see you make such speedy recovery" the Captain said as he poured a glass of scotch for himself, as Pitt refused one for himself.

"Thank you sir, it feels good to be mobile again"

"I'll bet, now obviously we can't send you back into your old unit, so have you given any thought to where you might like to be reassigned?"

"Well, I'm not sure, ISO Alpha is already full up, and I honestly can't see myself in a Charlie support role"

"Well I'm not sure 'support' is quite the word I'd use for Charlie, what I'm about to tell you would be better off staying between you and me Pitt. Most see Charlie squad as the techs that keep ISO's equipment running, or as the long distance recon units, now that's true to a certain degree, but there is a… substantial bit more to what an 'agent' does, know this the WRM doesn't completely rely on technology for its advantage, not that it hasn't helped, but think for just a moment, do you really think the raiders just up and quit after we destroyed one hideout with a laser, or that the people of the wasteland would trust us half as much if we just threw an orbital strike, or power armoured tanks with alien tech at any problem we face? No, there are…. Exceptionally talented people who work… discreetly for the betterment and protection of DC, some are exceptional at stealth, such as yourself, others prefer to use their talent for speech to solve a problem and some prefer to let their guns do the talking, but all are talented individuals who can work alone and without WRM support, as agents to us, and wanderers to the rest of the world, I think you have a knack for survival, you remind me of myself, as an agent you would have an enormous amount of freedom to deal with any… problems we send you to fix your way, but the support you would receive from us would be minimal to say the best, and it may be a very long time before you can step foot on the mother-ship again, but we have a mission that needs to be done, and done right, I think you're the man for the job, don't answer now, take a bit to think it over and tell me after dinner." Pitt silently saluted and turned for the door. "And remember Pitt, one way or another, keep this between us."

**(Hangar)**

Olin and Sally were working on one of the ships, trying to figure out how it worked, in order to reverse engineer it, it was long and tedious but Olin enjoyed the company of her little apprentice and Sally liked learning how to fix and craft, she was becoming quite the little tech.

"Hmmm, flight seems easy enough to recreate, a gravitational distortion field generator at the core of the ship making it weightless as smaller radiation powered jets push it around, with the parts on the ship we could probably build a prototype of that in about four weeks perhaps if we were to- Sally are you writing this down?" Olin said as lay under a half deconstructed saucer being held up the very distortion field, she was examining, if nothing else she had courage.

"Do you like the Captain?" Sally asked out of the blue, this led to Olin rocketing up and smashing her head into the hard metal of the ship.

"Owwww, what, why would you say that!" Olin groaned as she slid out from under the ship and rubbed her forehead.

"It's just your face always gets red when he talks to you, and I don't know he's kind of like my dad so if you guys were together, I'd have parents again." Sally said with complete innocence. Olin for all of her ice felt her heart melt a little and gave Sally a hug, but then she remembered when she hustled her out of twenty caps when she 'innocently' suggested they play a game of poker and called her out on her bullshit.

"Okay kid, what's your angle?" Olin interrogated with her coldest look, the only known tool to break Sally's power of manipulation.

"Okay so maybe you're a little more fun to work with when you think you have a shot with him" Sally said in much more business like tone, it was scary how fast she changed from sweet little girl to…. Whatever she was right now.

"What are you saying I don't? Wait a minute; don't even think THAT'S going to work on me, why are you trying so hard to get me to go after my COMMANDING OFFICER!" Olin shouted, and then was relieved to see the hangar was empty save for them.

"That's not it at all, sometimes he sneaks peeks at you in the Bridge and stuff, and you are happier when he's around and, and, okay fine, there's a new civilian on the ship called Lucy West, she knows the Captain from before and of you don't move now she'll steal him!" Sally seemed to be dead serious but Olin was stuck on the fact that the Captain 'sneaks peeks' at her, if she was alone right now, the smile would have stretched from ear to ear. Then the reality of what Sally said sunk in, a Rival! That could not be tolerated, not at all.

"Alright Sally what did you have in mind?"

**(Captain's Quarters)**

The Captain shared a drink of scotch with Lucy as the two caught up.

"I'm really surprised to see you Lucy; you don't seem like the adventurous type." The Captain smiled as they sat at his small white desk, which sat where the crafting table used to be.

"Well Ian has grown up and since he moved in with Karen he doesn't really need his sister around and I wouldn't really say becoming a nurse would count as adventurous, I guess I wanted a change of scenery, and the company isn't terrible." Lucy replied with a flirtatious smile. The Captain was about to say something when the intercom in his room crackled to life.

"Captain this is Olin We've made a breakthrough with the saucers you should probably come down here immediately!"

"Duty calls, I'm afraid" The Captain gave his farewell and hurried out of the room leaving a disappointed Lucy to walk down to the clinic for basic training.

**Hey guys and gals! This story is starting to get out of control, the amount of ideas I'm getting for this story is almost becoming too much, but I shall persist! For those who are starting to feel like the action has been waning and everything is a little too cartoony or feel good, then stay strong as the next chapter, which I have written in advance to be released alongside this one will be for you! Moral ambiguity, hard decisions and a budding romance, along with the reveal of a FO3 character very near and dear to me and many of you I'm sure, thank you all for every favourite and comment, they mean a lot to me as it's nice to see how people react to my writing, next in our two part release: Winter comes!**


	8. Winter Comes

**(Engineering)**

Pitt's head was full of questions, he had been offered something incredible, but to leave the ship for god knows how long? How could he tell Jackal? How could he leave his life on the ship behind? The buzz of the matrix jump was far less noticeable as he materialised in engineering. The main reactor was a sight to see, a giant triple reinforced glass (it was actually some kind of transparent metal according to Bigsley) orb containing brilliant bright white lightening jumping from one spot to another. The new arrivals always had time to stop and gawk at it, take in its beauty, of course anyone who's been on the ship more than a week simply snickers at them as they scurry to where ever it is they're needed; as Pitt stared at it he felt a sadness creep into him, he didn't know why but he felt as though something certain was rushing towards him, a finality. After a few more minutes of taking in the hypnotic light show Pitt pushed the feeling down and ambled towards the clinic, the second he stepped through the door he was bombarded with plethora of questions by Jackal and Leslie, it was quite the interrogation, but Pitt held fast and kept his promise to the Captain, much to the pair's annoyance. Leslie was slightly taller than Jackal, which was to say that she was considerably taller than Pitt, her brown hair was tied back into a small pony tail and her chocolate eyes full of life and intelligence darted from Pitt to Jackal as their ruthless questioning continued, at first Pitt was confused as he discreetly examined her, but he soon came to a realisation, Jackal would be fine if he weren't around. Pitt decided to leave as Elliot started to give him the evil eye for distracting his only help on call, politely making his exit he went down to his quarters, to collect his thoughts. His room was empty and for a second Pitt was confused, but cursing himself he remembered that the two others he shared his room with were part of his squad, it was his alone now, it was empty, even though he stood in the middle of it, it was devoid of warmth, his friend had begun to become happier without any help from him, his friends were gone and his purpose was gone with them, he was more alone than he had ever been, for the first time the ship's metal walls and view of the broken world below them made him feel cold. He sat down and held his alien pistol for a long time; he considered killing himself, there was no purpose to anything, no reason to survive anymore, just him, him and his gun.

**(Clinic)**

Jackal had been taking to medicine with great enthusiasm, every day he was getting better at diagnosing, treating, comforting and almost everything else he thought he was never going to do; Leslie was pushing him almost every step of the way, she had been there to mock him on his first mistake and almost everything else he did, she had come from some no name town that got wiped off the map by raiders, after some aimless years of wandering she found herself signing on with the WRM and that was just about all she'd say on her past, Jackal didn't mind, he didn't exactly want to share much about his past either, the two were colleges, constantly pushing one another on to be better than the other, and every once and a while, Jackal would turn to see Leslie just looking at him, and he would be caught staring at her very… healthy figure, and would receive no end of shit from her afterwards. But Jackal couldn't help but shake a bad feeling that day; he wasn't sure whether it was Pitt's face as he slipped out, or just how cold it seemed lately, but he fought the feeling down and went on about his routine, two hours before he could stuff his face and listen to GNR. The world had descended into chaos in a matter of seconds however as a young boy, no more than six or seven was carried into the clinic by a very distraught man who turned out to be his father, Jackal examined the child's heartbeat with his stethoscope and worked faster than light when he found that the child didn't have one, preforming CPR got his heart beating and some psycho got it beating fast enough to let Jackal focus on stabilising him on Med X. The Child who was identified as Daniel by his father Moses had simply gone from happy on a space adventure to convulsing on the ground within an hour, it started as a cough, taken over by a fever and next thing you know a full seizure kicks in turning into a sickening limpness, Jackal had no idea what this was but he knew some Med X wasn't going to cure it, Elliot who had been busy with a wounded ground patrol from RA had taken over in keeping the boy stable, steady treatments of Med X kept him breathing but in a drug induced coma, Jackal was so full of adrenaline he couldn't even think of relaxing, ignoring Leslie's suggestions to take a break, Jackal opened every medical textbook in the clinic and vowed not to move until he knew what in the hell could be done for this kid, Daniel.

**(Robot Assembly)**

Bigsley had finished his shift as second in command on the bridge and after complaining to the Captain to hurry up his decision to pick an official person for the job (for ten minutes) he retired to his favourite desk in the robot assembly area. The artillery bots were being deployed around the wasteland to settlements as a show of good faith, they acted as sentry turrets and early warning systems, a waste of their true potential but there wasn't going to be a shortage of robots to tinker with… ever, if those materialisers held up. He had been given the task of dealing with those damn gauss turrets the West Coast Brotherhood or WCB had set up around their base camp; those things could tear through saucers like butter and had seriously supped up sensors making their active camouflage useless, it was a shit situation but Bigsley had been through much worse. For the next three hours he planned, tinkered and theorised how to destroy, bypass or remotely deactivate those turrets, and came up with… nothing, he was livid, how could those fucking turrets be so resilient! Every simulation he ran, every equation and theory came up with failure, troops were torn apart, saucers were destroyed and he pictured that punk Mason laughing his smug little ass off. His head rested face down on his desk with the cool metal cooling off his forehead, when a small idea forced its way to the front of his mind as he heard about the child in the clinic. _What if we attacked biologically? _Bigsley pushed the thought away, bio warfare? He was a scientist not a murderer! _But how many of ours will be murdered if we don't beat them? The turrets are useless if everyone maintaining them is being killed by the air they breathe; from there we can just cut the power._ Bigsley sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, his way of gathering his thoughts, what would Rothchild say? They had their problems but Rothchild was the only person who could keep up with him, who Bigsley could respect as an intellectual equal, and despite all of the disapproving glares he imagined receiving from him Bigsley couldn't think of another option, he moaned as he wished for a mentat, cursing the chem restriction on the ship he started up a new simulation in his terminal, one decidedly less… ethical than the others, and the air around Bigsley grew just a little colder.

**(Pitt's quarters)**

"With a laser pistol, really? Well at least you won't leave too much of a mess for me to clean up, cheers for that, blood is just such a chore to clean, wouldn't you agree?" A gravelly voice said at his door. Pitt turned quickly to meet his intruder, to his shock it was Hollow the ghoul janitor that Jackal had saved, he wore a green jumpsuit and leaned in his doorway, almost like so nobody could see him like he was, gun to his head, red eyes meeting the ghoul with shame and anger. "Now, now, before you get all 'it's my choice!' so on and so forth let me explain something to you. I've lived for over two hundred years, seen it all twenty times over, I've seen buildings reach near the atmosphere, seen the world draped in fire, seen a kid become one of the most dangerous people in DC and beyond, seen him turn a fucked up brainwashed pathetic husk of a man and make him into something that might just be healthy, in this world anyway, but what I've never seen is this, the WRM, the government of old demanded loyalty, the hippies wanted anarchy, I've never though there could ever be a middle ground, but here we stand, in America's beautiful capital trying to give freedom to all and the safety to enjoy it." Hollow walked in closing the door behind him, he lit a cigarette and sat in the chair across from him. "So Jackal told you about me yes? How many bullets do you think janitors take on a day-to-day basis? Not many, so I'm going to give you what others have died for having, a proper introduction from me, Charon pleased to meet you." Charon gave a slight bow while sitting in his chair and sat back with a smile as Pitt's face froze in realisation. Before Pitt could say anything Charon put up his hand and with a quick flick a small pin seemed to appear out of nowhere, it was a grey wing, no bigger than Pitt's thumb. "This is an agent's badge, our oath, our only true identity, we may work in the shadow but we fight for the light, against any who would try to extinguish that light, even if it were the WRM itself, putting that pin on is an act of suicide itself, although less… messy than what you planned on, one person dies and an agent is born, as young as Charlie is, we are mighty and we are everywhere and nowhere, that's our creed kid, it's your choice." Charon left the pin in Pitt's hand and walked out of the room, slouching down to hide his incredible height and played the docile janitor Hollow once more. Pitt examined the pin and saw in very small writing the words 'everywhere and nowhere' were engraved on it, Pitt sat there staring into space, and slowly his hand clenched around the pin and for a second, he felt just a little bit warmer.

**(Clinic)**

Jackal was almost asleep when the sound of quick beeping woke him up, sprinting to Daniel's bed he saw the child's delicate frame, once again limp and pale, but no matter how much Jackal performed CPR the child simply didn't move, his frame lay perfectly still, as though he was photograph, Jackal didn't stop, repeating and repeating, until he was finally torn off by Elliot.

"He's gone Jackal, nothing can change that" Elliot said coldly, the words of a man who had seen death on a grand scale and been forced to move on for the next person who needed him, just as Jackal was expected to. Jackal fought at first but any strength he had evaporated as Daniel's father slowly approached his boy and fell to his knees. Jackal had lost all sense of time, he barely noticed Leslie taking his hand and leading him to his quarters, the cold he felt before came back and a sense of finality surrounded him, he simply began to cry into Leslie's shoulder and eventually the tears dried up as they fell asleep in each other's arms, the world above earth had been safe, clean, perfect, but they couldn't escape what lurked below them, there was a saying in the wasteland, war never changes, run all you want death is always playing the long game, and the sun gave no warmth in space.

**(Robot Assembly)**

Bigsley had run a new simulation, an airborne virus could easily be introduced into the bunker's ventilation system, if the disease that the boy had could be reproduced the entire population of the bunker could be dead in a matter of two hours, first they would cough, one after the other, panic would set in as the fever hit, when the fell to the ground in seizers it would be far too late for them, their bodies would go limp and cold and then all of their technology could be taken with no resistance at all, the remaining forces could be dealt with a simple orbital strike, no high powered scrambler to save them like the bunker, it was tactically genius, so why did it make Bigsley so uneasy? Wouldn't it be better for the WRM? No casualties on our side, not even a single bullet fired, they would just catch a cold and die, right? The point was moot unless the disease could be replicated and made airborne, Bigsley would need to see the body, he would say he was making sure it couldn't be spread, if Elliot made problems he would just say he had a lead on an antidote and say it just didn't work out in the end, what was the harm of just taking a few samples? He could be saving hundreds of lives, wasn't that something people were called heroes over? All he knew was that he needed a drink, and badly, why was it so cold?

**(The Bridge)**

"Dear god, how? How did this happen? HOW DID WE LET THIS HAPPEN!" The Captain shouted in disbelief and anger. The window in front of him had been connected to one of the cameras placed in the wasteland, all this camera saw however was debris spread for miles, and body parts, so many pieces of human made so… inhuman. The camera panned to see the burning wreckage of the Citadel, every now and then a person would emerge from the wreckage and simply walk around in shock, others babbled incoherent nonsense; the majority of the Brotherhood's fighting force had been out, fighting supermutants, patrolling, trying to remind people of the brotherhood's existence, something that was grimly ironic now.

"Reports suggest that it was a very large container of C4 explosives, complimented by many smaller strategically placed ones, if that was nuclear there wouldn't be any survivors, it would seem that the explosives killed most of the people underground so it would seem it was placed there." One of the techs said professionally, knowing they would break if they didn't cut off emotions, Bigsley wasn't the only tech poached from the brotherhood. The Captain began to bark orders at the speed of a bullet train, the majority of RA was sent as a relief force headed by the Captain himself, saucers were used to destroy debris blocking exits for the people trapped below and RA and the medics just did whatever they could. On that miserable cold, grey day the Brotherhood died and the WRM became the voice of the wasteland.

**(Citadel)**

The Captain oversaw the relief effort himself, his voice hard and loud, just trying to save as many as possible. The walls of the Citadel were still smouldering and crumbling, this place would never be defensible again, the courtyard was covered in concrete, metal and everything else the Citadel could have torn out of it. Patrols came back one by one, they all screamed in pain and sorrow as they saw their beloved home in ruins, their brothers dead and dying, whatever bad blood there was between the two organisations had been burned clean, they worked side by side, just trying to save what they could. The dead could only be identified through their holo-tags, the Captain searched and searched and with a feeling of anguish and despair he found what he begged god not to see, Owen Lyons was no more, his years of vigilant protection were finally at an end. The captain knew the pride had been sent away, he didn't know what to do when they came back, it would only be a matter of time, he was tempted to pull out all of his men just to not be the one to tell her what had happened, but as held one of the only things to mark the existence of elder Lyons he knew he couldn't run, nowhere would be far enough, not even space. All of his fears came true two days later, as they continued to pull out survivors and tend to the wounded a blonde haired woman vacantly walked across the destruction, closely followed by her pack, they simply took in the destruction and felt all of the pain their comrades felt enter them and when Sarah saw the Captain, the Wanderer, it all crashed down upon her. Charging at him at an extraordinary pace despite her power armour, Sarah threw punch after punch at the Wanderer who blocked every one of them.

"WHY! WHY DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN!" Sarah screamed in fury

"Sarah calm down!" the Wanderer yelled back, he was only wearing a black overcoat and every hit from the hard steel of her power armour hurt badly, blocked or not. She just punching and punching until the Wanderer had one knee on the ground just trying to hold his ground, it took the entire pack to restrain her, blood dripped down the Wanderer's arms when he stood up; he simply nodded to one of the techs who spoke into a small white circular disk. A beacon was shot down behind the Wanderer and he was the Captain once more, all of the WRM members began to use it until it was just the Captain staring at Sarah and the remainder of the brotherhood. "This beacon will be extracted in ten hours, if you want to make the people who did this pay, simply say 'take me home' to the beacon and we'll give Lyons justice together." Without another word he turned towards beacon and disappeared into the great ether, leaving the brotherhood to mourn and decide their future. On this cold day the WCB sealed a certain finality upon the wasteland, it was them or the WRM.

**Special thanks to oddliver who has been very helpful in coming up with ideas through the majority of this story**


	9. A chance encounter

**(Tenpenny Tower)**

Griffon couldn't help chuckle, god life was good! It was a stroke of genius really, take aqua pura, add a little jet and mentats, some other two dozen chemicals and next thing you know you have aqua stimulus, a highly addictive liquid drug that creates a massive demand and a sea of caps for the taking, add these brotherhood nuts who were willing to put him and his goons up in the most luxurious digs in all of DC for a slice of the action and you get Griffon's little 'family' a collection of ghoul rejects kicking around anyone stupid enough to wander too close to the tower (something which gives the WCB some breathing room) or drink their stimulus (which ensures a weak DC ripe for occupation). Griffon spent his time out on the balcony of Tenpenny Tower, he understood why that old prick Tenpenny loved it up here, the view was spectacular. To any sniper who would try to take a pot shot at him (there was more than a few) it would seem like Griffon was completely unprotected, but if they were to actually take the shot they would find there bullet to hit the air in front of him as though hitting a brick wall. Discreetly hidden under the table which held Griffon's drinks and lunch was a transparent energy field projector (courtesy of the WCB), this little device could project a two metre wide force field bubble which was capable of stopping most ballistic and energy weapons at a range effective up to a metre, at this point, a carefully planned roster of patrol teams meant that if the shooter was anywhere within a kilometre of the tower, the teams could easily converge on their location and end them, more than a few would be assassins' corpses decorated the surrounding landscape as a warning to others, it was not a pretty sight. As Griffon sat in his palace, enjoying his ill-gotten fortunes, it had never once occurred to him that the WRM was anything more than a bunch of kids playing hero.

Pitt hadn't said any goodbyes, there was no letter left in his room or heartfelt messages left telling his friends to continue living their lives, he knew he didn't have to worry about that, for intents and purposes he simply decided to transfer to Charlie squad's long distance recon unit, otherwise known as the agents. His mission was to bring down Griffon and his organisation before the WCB could fortify the tower, Charon had apparently recruited a team to harass the WCB at Evergreen Mills in order to buy Pitt time to achieve mission. Pitt was cramped behind an overly peppy saucer pilot who called herself Mary; she seemed to enjoy flying as she had taken the longest possible route to take Pitt to his landing zone, when they finally did reach their LZ the RobCo factory just outside of Tenpenny Tower the sun had already set, Pitt was slowly set down by the saucer's gravity lift and the stealth craft skittered away undetectably as Pitt headed inside the ancient facility. The facility had not survived the years anywhere near as well as its robots had, protectrons and Mr Handys roamed the halls, defending the perimeter (as the four ghoul corpses indicated) and repairing and building the other units. One year earlier the Wanderer had managed to alter the robot's programing and take control of the facility, ever since the artillery bots however this place had become somewhat unimportant, but allowing Griffon to get his hands on the place, and in turn the WCB would be unacceptable. As he entered he was scanned by five Mr Handys until the codes put into his pip-boy were transmitted to them giving him complete access to the factory, _Whoopdi fucking do_ he thought to himself as he made his way past the robots, they tirelessly worked on one another, making repairs and doing other necessities but as Pitt climbed a particularly dilapidated stair case he saw two protectrons simply, staring (if that was possible with sensor panel) at one another, almost as though they were having a muted conversation, it looked… disturbing to say the least. Just as Pitt was going to investigate further however, the protectrons attacked, the lasers they fired seemed amplified it was more like they were shooting cannons. Pitt burst through a nearby door and found himself in the factory's cafeteria, more and more protectrons began to appear forcing Pitt to run through the only hallway that wasn't teeming with the metallic bastards, the hallway led to a stair case and the stair case led to a room. He was faces with three options, take the left hallway which was teeming with robots if his hearing was any judge, take the right hallway which in all probability led to nowhere or he could try the door in between the two and hope to god that was the mainframe he was told about. As he burst through the door he was greeted with a 10mm pistol in his face, Pitt quickly knocked the gun away and rolled back to get some space; he stood with his plasma pistol pointed at his assailant and almost had to double take, in front of him was very fragile looking women, she was decked out in wasteland wanderer gear and had dirty blonde hair going down to her shoulders, she had a sniper rifle slung around her back, a fierce expression on her dirty face… _and a pip-boy on her wrist, what the fuck? _It didn't take long for Pitt to connect the dots, he flashed his handy dandy wing pin and as hoped his would be dispatcher lowered her side arm and regarded him with an ominous look.

"Soooooooo, small wasteland huh?" Pit awkwardly chuckled as he slowly put his own weapon in its holster. The girl simply turned her back to him and started typing into the robot's mainframe.

"Are you just going stand there staring like an idiot or are you here to actually do something, god I hate stupid wastelanders and this place is hardly fitting for a super important person like me." The girl said in an annoyingly whining tone.

"Uh I was under the impression that I was the only… agent in the area, so um what the hell are you doing here?"

"You want the long version or the short?"

"I can just tell this is going to be fun" Pitt groaned as he barricaded the door to listen to the long version.

**(Robot Assembly)**

Bigsley had managed to dodge bridge duty by the skin of his teeth, he was still riding the high of seeing Olin's face as he strutted out leaving her to the humdrum of war organisation while the Captain did… whatever it was he did when he wasn't doing… whatever it was he actually did on the bridge, Bigsley decided against trying to evaluate their fearless leader's job performance, should the Captain get wind of any kind of talk like that then Bigsley would have to face… the tears, oh god angry tears that could tear apart a man's very soul. Dismissing these frankly disturbingly childish thoughts Bigsley focused on the work ahead of him, he had turned two of the rooms in the assembly area into his personal laboratory, the construction variants of the robots produced had taken down a wall connecting two adjacent rooms, they were quite industrious something Bigsley had no end of pride about. Even with the expansion it was very small for a lab, one large table covered in gizmos and test tubes a Chinese stealth helmet was connected to various computers allowing Bigsley to run complicated simulations and even access and interact with his entire personal computer network with unprecedented productivity, the cluttered and cramped space was a cosy retreat for Bigsley, all he ever wanted, a small to run his experiments in peace and relative solitude. Bigsley walked and carefully placed a small glass test tube inside one of the computer terminals, he then sat in his favourite chair, leant back as a heavily modified enclave power armour helmet descended on his head and watched the world deteriorate into green lines of code which turned into holograms of the pathogen, fatality rates, weapons integrations, countless simulations swarmed in front of him, the world became an endless testing lab. The disease was genetic it would seem, some natural defect stimulated by years of radiation exposure, it was fascinating really, theoretically if it could be replicated at the fully mature stage it was in the child then anyone afflicted by it would be killed from minor radiation exposure in seconds, the WCB would be forced to stay in extremely controlled environments or perhaps the radiation they've already accumulated would kill outright. First its kidney failure, after that the heart begins to go into overdrive but the blood cells its moving are actually part of the mutated genes, organ after organ ceases to function until the body can simply function no more, it was so cruel that it was perfect FEV could learn a thing or two from this.

**(RobCo Facility)**

"You are screwing with me right?" Pitt asked disbelievingly

"What's so hard to believe?" the woman replied impatiently

"Who names their kid Bittercup?"

"I chose the name, Mr Tasteless"

"Who the hell names THEMSELF BITTERCUP!"

"Someone who has a true understanding of the dark" Bittercup replied trying to sound poetic… it did not work. Pitt resisted the urge to tear down the barricade and just take his chances with the horde of robotic assholes waiting for him outside but just barely decided that he probably shouldn't ditch his first mission just because he ran into one of the most annoying girls in the wasteland.

"So you decided to rewrite the robots to attack the tower? That's actually not a bad idea, but why are you here to begin with?" Bittercup seemed to be very hesitant to answer the question but Pitt's unrelenting glare and the awkward silence that ensued eventually won out.

"Well before this I kind of, well maybe umm… made one of the robots on the ship blow up, I didn't know black paint would make it do that! Well anyway I heard about this Griffon guy and I thought if I could get rid of him my boyfriend would forgive me and I could stop this stupid wasteland assignment and get back on the ship" Bittercup giggled as she proudly explained her plan to Pitt.

"Wait, Boyfriend?" Pitt asked with a sinking feeling, if she was talking about who he thought she was then this girl was more delusional than he thought.

"You know, the captain, your boss, you should really address me as mam" Bittercup giggled again and Pitt had to sit down to stop himself breaking down the barricade and leaving this incredibly stupid girl for the robots. Pitt took a second to consider his situation, if he left now then he would have to fight the robots, it's a fight he'd probably win but Griffon's lackeys were set up pretty well around the tower. Pitt was about to consider some other options when a thought crossed his mind.

"Wait a minute why are the robots hostile, the codes on my pip-boy should have marked me as a VIP but those things are shooting to kill!" Pitt asked Bittercup, who in turn looked at the ceiling like a guilty child.

"Uh well…."

"Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me…. You messed with mainframe didn't you?"

"Oh you mean the big computer thingy?"

"…..go sit in the corner while I fix this"

"But-"

"NOW!" Bittercup sulked in the corner while Pitt used his limited computer knowledge to try and fix the situation. He couldn't stop the hostile targeting of the robots but an idea crept into his head, Griffon had a heavily fortified perimeter but what were the odds that he was smart enough to do the same for the building itself?

**(Jefferson Memorial)**

Project Purity had become the east coast brotherhood's headquarters with the loss of the citadel they were scrambling to simply have it adequately fortified, thankfully most of the brotherhood's science staff were here working on the project when the citadel was destroyed. The pride had been disbanded, most of them leading teams of their own, others training up the initiates, it was a nightmare, supplies, staff, equipment all of these things were limited to begin with but now it was a hard question whether they had enough food to last the facility for a week. Sarah had become the new elder and that frankly scared the living shit out of her, her men looked to her for answers, answers she could not give them, she was full anger for her father's death, still was, but now that she had cooled down keeping the brotherhood alive just didn't seem possible, were they really going to have to give up and join the WRM?

"Sen- uh elder Lyons, mam Rothchild's condition has stabilised but it seems he's slipped into a coma, I'm sorry mam we don't know when he'll wake up… if he'll wake up." A scribe said raggedly, he had obviously been up for days, they all had, Sarah gave him a quick nod and sat back in her chair, she could see why Bigsley hated this room and the news about Rothchild didn't help her mood at all, another person she knew dying might just be enough to push her off the edge right now. Sarah watched all of her people scurrying about so frantically, she looked around the office she had made hers, why were there so many maps? She realised she was still in shock, it had only been what a day, maybe two, she couldn't tell with no windows in her room, two days and she had become the head of her chapter? What the hell! This wasn't right, she was supposed to have more time, she was supposed to be ready… she was supposed to have her father here. Alarms began to ring throughout the facility, supermutants, or raiders, she didn't know, it wasn't until a medic came into her room that she finally snapped out of her little emotional paralysis.

"Mam the supermutants are attacking the facility, if they attack the power generators then all of the brothers on life support will die!" Sarah had taken exactly three seconds to review her situation before she responded.

"Get Gallows' squad out there, and route any generator inside the facility to the life support systems" Sarah was quick and to the point as she grabbed her laser rifle and power armour helmet.

"Mam Gallows' squad is already out there and the generators inside the facility do not have enough power to support the medical systems!" Things had gone from bad to fucked up very quickly, they had run out, out of time, ammo and soon people, the end was exceedingly nigh right now.

**(RobCo Facility)**

Pitt had managed to set the mainframe to send all of the units towards the tower, while Griffon's guards were fighting the metallic swarm Pitt and Bittercup managed to sneak into the compound and disabled the four guards at the door, say what you about Bittercup, the girl could handle her sniper rifle, still not worth spending more than five minutes in the same room with her however. The two worked their way through the lobby by stealthily ending one guard after another, thankfully Griffon never expected anyone to get into the tower so the number of guards was pitiful. Pitt used the elevator leaving Bittercup to watch the entrance and cover him from anyone left alive in the lobby (the mess would indicate that was very unlikely). Pitt readied his plasma pistol and waited for the little lights to eventually hit the top floor, when he heard the ding it was as though time had slowed down. Two thugs facing the elevator, morons didn't even bother to get behind cover, two shots two kills (and one very green floor), another by Griffon's door, Pitt had to take cover behind a pillar as the guard begin to shoot his combat shotgun in a frenzy, there was a very uncomfortable silence when the gun began to give clicks when he pulled it's trigger.

"…You did pack another clip for yourself right?" Pitt asked through the gun smoke

"Uh maybe" the ghoul replied in his gravelly voice. Pitt literally smacked his head in embarrassment for the moron, of course he then proceeded to kick the shit out of him, somebody had to. Pitt kicked in the door to Griffon's room and was met by a very bad shot from the man himself, the shot ended up hitting a vase about half a meter away from Pitt, who simply shot Griffon in both knee caps.

"My guards-"Griffon began to grumble

"Yeah they're dead" Pitt chuckled

"What do you want?"

"Honestly? A serious conversation, lately it seems like everyone's just plain retarded" Pitt answered seriously as he put his gun to Griffon's head "So let's talk"

**(Robot Assembly)**

"What'cha doing?" The Captain asked childishly as he snuck behind Bigsley

"God dammit! How many times have I told you to not bother me when I'm wearing my simulation helmet!" Bigsley shouted as he took of the helmet, as he did he saw the Captain staring at him and ten seconds of awkward silence ensued. "…you sound disturbingly like Sally"

"Really?"

"Why are you here?"

"What we can't hang out anymore?"

"We never hung out"

"Well why don't we start?"

"I will shoot you"

"Okay fine then Mr antisocial I shall take my leave then" The Captain twirled around with surprising grace and began to walk out of the room, before he reached the door however he spoke to Bigsley once more without looking at him, his voice much deeper and almost terrifying. "Are you aware of the story of Icarus Bigsley? Of course you are, he died because he flew to close to the sun, remember that old friend, we are substantially closer to the sun here than down there." With that the Captain took his leave and Bigsley started to sweat for the first time since he boarded the ship.

**(Jefferson Memorial)**

The super mutants were attacking in force, Gallows counted three overlords, four masters and no less than ten regular supermutants, knight after knight fell and things became exceedingly hopeless, luckily they were stupid enough to all bunch up on the bridge leading to the facility. Gallows threw a grenade into the crowd and took out two of the regular ones but the rest seemed unscathed, they couldn't afford to let them get any closer, Gallows was losing hope quickly. As the mutants got closer Gallows scrounged up two more frag grenades, not enough, he desperately looked around until he found one of the ammo crates, bullets and lasers were flying all around him blood made the ground hard to move on with his power armour, he managed to reach the crate slipping and nearly falling into the lake, he opened it up and nearly kicked the damn thing over, all that was inside was a single mini-nuke, out of time, out of options. Gallows threw one grenade into the crowd and grabbed the mini-nuke he then took the other grenade in his hand and began to sprint at the supermutants; they were close to the end of the bridge. Sarah screamed something at him from the facility's entrance, he couldn't hear her, ten metres, five metres, before Gallows could reach his mark and blue light descended from the sky, it burnt the mutants to a crisp and sent Gallows flying backwards, he simply stared at the light that came pouring down and for a second, just a single second, wondered if this was the thumb of god smiting something he saw as unrighteous, before the light left darkness surrounded him, nobody else could tell but under his helmet was a smile, he remembered that god died at least two hundred years ago.


	10. One falls, one fights

**(Tenpenny Tower) **

"… Are you shitting with me?" Pitt growled as he pushed his plasma pistol against Griffon's temple.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time?" Griffon responded sheepishly. Pitt stood Griffon up wiped some dust off the shoulders of his white pinstriped suit and in an almost theatrical manner, threw him off the balcony, Griffon's gravelly scream lasted for a disturbingly long time until a faint thud hit the ground. Pitt had dealt with doing far worse atrocities such as this to survive, in fact he sat down and lit a cigarette before Griffon had even hit the ground, no his very disturbed expression was the symptom of something far more disturbing than the murder of a dick.

"Heeeeeey, what's taking so long, unlike you I have a sweet heart to get back to" Bittercup swooned ridiculously.

"We're not going back to the ship yet" Pitt said without emotion "We're going to Little Lamplight." Pitt had to fight hard to not slap Bittercup as she made a mock choking sound to show her disgust at the thought of returning to her former… collection of people who tolerated her… tried to tolerate her.

**(Robot Assembly)**

Bigsley was getting paranoid and he damn well knew it, he hadn't done anything wrong had he? It was just a simulation, how did the Captain even know? Was he being spied on? Did the Captain sneak in here himself? He saw himself in a mirror, Christ he looked terrible, it was like he was back in Purity….. It was like he was that empty person all over again. Bigsley looked at his interface helmet; it was automatically deleting his simulations on weaponizing the virus, it wasn't worth it, not really, Bigsley wasn't really the make friends type, nor did he feel particularly indebted to the Captain, but Bigsley had seen people who had been lost to their research, who flew too close to the sun, maybe he was getting to close himself, whatever the reasoning he had a feeling that the Captain's little history lesson was more of a warning than a threat, what scared him, what terrified him was that fact that he had been rightly admonished by a man child, that and the fact he knew Olin would find out about this, god he needed a drink. Bigsley had poured himself a glass of warm scotch and had decided to spend the rest of the day in quiet contemplation, a desire which was pretty much got the shit kicked out of it when he decided to check the deletion progress of the simulation files. The screen inside of the helmet simply said: TRANSFER COMPLETE. Bigsley put the helmet down absent minded and poured himself another glass of scotch.

"Well shit"

**(Project Purity, Interior)**

Gallows woke up inside the facilities make shift infirmary, shit the entire facility was make shift, his head decided that it hated him the second he tried to get up, it was fearsome battle but Gallows won in the end. As he shambled down the corridor he noticed a disturbing lack of people rushing around, he passed two rooms full of bodies with red stained white cloths covering them, but not enough to explain the absence of so many. No one Gallows encountered even bothered to acknowledge him, they were all too busy….. Packing?

**(Project Purity, Exterior)**

"Wow you're really not happy to see me huh?" The Captain chuckled nervously with his hands up as Sarah Lyons and the rest of the Pride minus Gallows pointed very big guns at him.

"What gives you that impression?" Lyons asked with a dead serious face. The Captain stared at her for a long time, taking in her features, he could tell how tired she was, how close to the snapping point she had been pushed, he utilised all of his experience in the face of certain death and made sure….. To push her just a little bit further. Before the Pride had even known it, the Captain had ducked low sprinted past the shocked soldiers and right up to Lyons, in one fluid motion he knocked away her laser rifle and dipped her as though they were doing the waltz. "What in god's name?!"

"Well? Shall we dance our troubles away until the sun goes down?" The Captain's black overcoat danced in the breeze as he twirled around with a very reluctant Brotherhood Elder. Every time one of the Pride lined up a shot the Captain would move Lyons in front of him and yet it seemed as though he was simply obeying the steps to some pre-war dance, Lyons was not so elegant however, a trained soldier waltzing in a T-45d suit of power armour is….. Not a sight for the faint of heart.

"What the hell is wrong with you!" Lyons shouted as she expertly flung the Captain over her shoulder resulting in loud thud. The Captain laughed whole heartedly as he deftly jumped up as though he were thrown on a soft bed instead of hard asphalt.

"There are a LOT of opinions on that, but more importantly I'm more interested in what's not wrong with you" The Captain chuckled as dusted himself off, he walked past Lyons and her exceedingly annoyed soldiers and stared at project purity, it seemed like for a second he was in another time, a better time, but just as soon as he left he was back again. "I've always respected you as a soldier Sarah, you know that, I wanted to give you more time I really did but reality's always closing in on us and there some things that simply have to be done." The Captain wasn't smiling anymore, his warm and playful eyes were replaced with cameras, cold pieces of metal that only existed to lock onto targets until they were no more, he put his hands behind his back and stood straight with an authority that almost made him seem like a giant. "The offer to join us is always there and I have no intention of forcing you to rush that decision at all, but as of today this is a WRM facility, I'm sorry but it's obvious that you no longer have the manpower, supplies….. Or the will to hold it, the WBC be here before long and if purity falls, we all do." The Captain let his words sink in, he looked only at Sarah, she felt the burn of his gaze and he knew it, he made sure that she knew his words carved in stone, unescapable and completely directed at her. It seemed like hours passed when in fact it had only been twenty seconds, twenty seconds was all it took for Lyons to decide on her response.

"You want it? Try and take it" Her words were just as cold and her gaze was enough to make a deathclaw turn the other way.

"I knew you still had some life in you yet" The Captain began to unbutton his overcoat, while Lyons took off her armour, much to the confusion of the crowd and to the blind rage of Olin who had been monitoring them via the beacon launched to teleport the Captain to the memorial. "If I win I expect the Brotherhood to fall in line and follow orders, trust me you'll like the ship much better than here."

"Really too bad because we'll be far too busy with all of your saucers after I kick your deranged ass here and take them for the brotherhood." The fate of the Brotherhood, a group dedicated to knowledge, understanding and chivalry….. Semi-chivalry was going to be decided by… a nineteen year old boy and a twenty three year old woman beating the shit out of one another.

**Jesus it's been so long, I'm really sorry guys but life happened and the story just kinda got swept aside, but the holidays are here and I'm committed to getting this freaking thing done, I'd really appreciate your reviews as I'm feeling rusty and may have to redo this chapter, it's basically just setting things up for the next arch which when the WCB really start hitting the scene…. Literally, there just going to start hitting everything.**


	11. Calm before the storm

**(Jocko's Pop & Gas Stop)**

Pitt and Bittercup had decided to hole up in the old gas station close to Tenpenny tower, Pitt had no desire to be trekking in the wasteland with Bittercup whining all through the night, they had lit a very small fire in the small ramshackle building which Pitt used to heat a small tin of beans, god he missed the food materializers.

"So why are we going back to that super crappy hole in the ground?" Bittercup moaned as she half-heartedly poked her beans with a… relatively clean spork.

"WCB's going to hit it" Pitt said emotionlessly.

"So?"

"How humanitarian of you" Pitt sighed as he stared into the small flame as cracked meekly.

"The WCB Are going to mount an offensive against the super mutants."

"So?" Pitt sighed at Bittercup's vacant face and decided to take his explanation very slowly.

"If the WCB wipe out the super mutants breeding ground it will be empty, right?"

"Yeah, and?"

"If it's empty then there's no one there to stop the WCB from doing whatever they want, right?"

"SO WHAT?!" Bittercup Squealed in the height of her ditzy frustration.

"What do the super mutants use to breed?" Pitt sighed in an annoyed tone

"….. Oh" Bittercup finally caught up

"Now what could the WCB want with all of that FEV? We know there's still a large amount there from what the Captain has told us" Pitt was just talking to himself at that point, Bittercup was muttering in the corner about how ugly she would be as a super mutant and getting dumped by the Captain, Pitt didn't really care. As he was thinking about how to get to Little lamplight without running into any WCB patrols from fort Bannister the radio inside the little gas station began to crackle to life.

"-ey child- -res –ree dog!" The radio was broken and most of the words were unintelligible, Pitt simply turned it off and used his pip-boy, god he loved that thing.

"Has life got you down children? Are you feeling tired? Scared? Lonely? Well too bad cuz there ain't a damn thing I can to about that! But if that didn't make you feel better then maybe some news will? I've gotten reports that super mutant sightings and conflicts inside of the DC metropolitan area is at an all-time low! I got to tell you kiddies I'm looking outside right now and looks nice and empty! So if you were holding off on buying that high rise apartment in the city now might be the time to get excited as we wait and see if out Frankenstein guests have finally read their eviction notices! Now on that note I leave you with season two of our most popular radio segment, you guessed it, the adventures of the Lone Wanderer!"

"You're listening to the second season of the adventures of the Lone Wanderer played by Wilks of the GNR security force, today's episode: Point Lookout.

"My Tobar this certainly is shaping up to be a bit of a trip isn't it! RL-3 would have loved to shoot some the fish we passed by."

"Haha good thing I didn't let you bring him along then! Some of those fish might just sink this ship if we give them enough of a reason to. I don't mean to pry into any of your business Mr?"

"You can call me, the Lone Wanderer good sir."

"My that is quite the moniker Mr Lone Wanderer, so might I ask what brings you to Point Lookout?"

"Well actually it's quite simple I've learned from a rather distraught mother that her daughter has run off here seeking fortune and fame, and I never was one to leave a damsel in distress."

"How noble sir, but oh my is that smoke I see on the horizon! Oh dear you might have to put your philosophy to the test."

Tune in next week to hear the continuation Pitt had always loved the radio drama that they played on GNR but had found that one to be pretty boring, he turned off his pip-boy and got ready to sleep when he almost shat his pants. Bittercup had been staring at him with the intensity of the sun, but when got over the initial shock he saw a certain sparkle in her eyes, as Bittercup began to spring into a machine gun fire conversation about how much she loved the show (and hated Sarah Lyons) he was seriously considering suicide.

**(Experimental Troop carrier)**

Olin and her team had out done themselves, instead of just reverse engineering a flying saucer they managed to make a new model all together, they had figured out how to use the technology on the saucer and apply it to the verti-birds, now instead of an alien craft with room for one, you had a familiar craft capable of all the death and destruction plus space worthiness and troop deployment capabilities. The majority of what remained of the Brotherhood was being transported in four of these craft as using beacons to teleport them would have been too much of a strain on the teleporter's energy reactor.

"I didn't lose" Sarah pouted in the co-pilot's seat as the Captain piloted her and the pride up to the ship.

"Sure you didn't" the Captain replied smugly. Unlike the former model of verti-birds the WRM version was much larger and also boasted small windows on each side (made of the transparent metal the shielded the main reactor), Sarah lost all of her depression as soon as the ships began to leave the atmosphere. It was a sight to see, the clouds began part as they reached higher and higher altitudes, until the white curtains finally parted to reveal the black theatre of space. Sarah instinctively put her hand on the Captain's shoulder as she felt a falling feeling when the artificial gravity kicked in, the pride were all stunned for exactly five seconds before they all started to yell and hoot in absolute glee, the Captain linked in with all of the other comms of the other ships so the Brotherhood could hear each other cheer, it had been a long time since they had heard their brothers cheer. Olin's face suddenly appeared on the windscreen of the carrier and Sarah quickly took her hand off of the Captain's shoulder (a women's intuition is strong indeed), but not quick enough it would seem as Olin instantly death stared knives covered in snakes being held by a super mutant at her, all of which the Captain seemed blissfully unaware of. "Ah Olin good timing as ever, prep the docking bay to receive us, I want Bigsley and Elliot in my Quarters immediately." The Captain said with a little smile as he flicked various switches as the carrier got closer to the mother ship, a sight which exacerbated the Brotherhood's case of awe. Olin simply nodded politely and cut the signal with a parting death stare at Sarah.

"Huh been a long time since I've seen Olin" Sarah said nervously.

"Yes I've never seen her so happy before" the Captain replied cheerfully.

"There really is something terribly wrong with you."

"Why does everyone say that?"

"I'm sure you'll figure it out."

**(Cryogenics) **

Jackal and Leslie had spent the last few days in a bit of an awkward period, after what had happened between them they had decided to simply stay friends for the time being, it seemed better, especially since Jackal was being re-assigned to RA Alpha as a medic, it was a shock decision for Leslie and Elliot but Jackal took no objections, he didn't believe the story about Pitt's re-assignment and wouldn't believe that he just left without a single word, he knew trying to get answers from the Captain would just be stupid, it's hard enough to understand him when wasn't trying to hide something. Jackal knew he could get some answers back down on the wasteland, and that's exactly where he planned to go. RA Alpha had taken more of a defensive role along with the rest of RA, defending Megaton and it's various trade routes had them pretty full handed, ISO was doing…. Whatever the fuck it is that ISO does when they're not long distance scouting, seriously something fishy was going on with them, Jackal had a feeling that it might have something to do with Pitt but for now his only concern was finding him. Alpha's mission was simple, a shipment of terminals capable of connecting every outpost in the wasteland with the mother ship and Megaton was going to be delivered to said outposts, it was impossible for the WCB to hack into the terminals as they required the other end to allow access, every terminal had a camera which was always running which meant the other person could see who was trying to access the terminal, if it was legit comms would be opened, if not, the self-destruct (a mini fission generator… connected to a mini nuke) would be activated, but of the WCB destroyed them it would cost time to get connected to the outposts, precious time. Jackal got into his medic armour (a modified replication of another talking model that the Captain had used) and promptly boarded the carrier with the rest of Alpha.

"Jesus took you long enough doc, thought I'd have to run to a local doctor after spending some time with Nova when we touch down, I wouldn't want you to miss out on that!" A loud comrade bellowed as Jackal got in his seat across from him, his name was Garret, loud and crude but death incarnate with a minigun, and now he had a launcher from one of the artillery bots.

"Do you ever shut the fuck up?" Timebomb moaned, he was from Big town a little shit hole just north of Megaton, apparently the place isn't so bad now that it's a WRM outpost, but Timebomb always has an angry face when it's mentioned. He learned how shoot conservatively due to the shit all amount of everything in Big Town, this turned into sharp shooting, which turned into sniping.

"Looks like it's just like old times huh?" Donovan chuckled to Jackal as he tinkered with his pip-boy, he used to be in Riley's Rangers until Riley and Butcher retired, he was fixing things in Underworld until he heard about the WRM, normal kind of guy, no real distinguishing features about him, but if he wasn't with RA he'd probably be right up there with Bigsley and Olin, said he didn't really like the politics those two brought to the division, besides once a ranger, always a ranger. The SL just sat quietly in his seat as he gave his atomizer a final check before departure, he went by Barret, he was ghoul and the rumour has it he was the body guard to some drug dealer hiding out in the metro tunnels before the Captain capped him, besides that the guy was a fucking mystery, and a deadly one at that. The Departure was cleared and the transport gently fell out of the hole in the hangar bay into space before the jets under its rotors thrust it forward towards the brown scarred earth.

**(Hangar)**

Olin had been quite impressed with the new transports, and even more impressed with her latest insults at Bigsley all she needed now was to get rid of two very annoying obstacles going by the name of Lyons and West. She was an educated woman, a rare thing in these times, despite his…. Eccentricities the Captain was actually quite a learned person himself, but unlike Bigsley or any others in the Brotherhood he wasn't arrogant about it, that made him even rarer than her, so it was with a sinking heart she sat at her desk in the bay stuck overlooking the fine tuning of her brilliant designs while that damn Lyons loitered about with Bigsley and Elliot in the Captain's quarters. Sally noticed her mentor's dour expression and decided it was time to go on the offensive, she was a quick learner and had a grasp of the various ships almost as impressive as Olin herself, it was this talent that would allow to Sally enact her classic plan, her smile was almost demonic.

**(Captain's Quarters)**

"I'm sorry what? Did I hear him right Tercorian?" Bigsley questioned in an annoyed tone.

"Well what's so bad about it? He seems to think it's a good idea, so why not?" Elliot replied with a good natured smile.

"You see Elliot agrees, Sarah would make a fine first officer and it would be the easiest way to integrate the Brotherhood members into the command chain." The Captain argued, Sarah simply on the Captain's bed, the events of the day had left her very, very tired, her men were safe, and fed so she was perfectly content at the moment.

"And that's another thing who asked to bring the brotherhood onto the ship; I joined up to get away from them!"

"What's the problem, now you get to boss them around!"

"Not good enough!"

"With a first officer you'll never have bridge duty again" the Captain said as though he were watching an animal wander into his trap.

"Welcome aboard Lyons!" Bigsley exclaimed wholeheartedly falling for said trap, but when the three men turned around from the desk to face her they saw her sleeping soundly on the fluffy blankets the civilians had made for the people on the ship, she was in some cargo pants and a tank top luckily, if she was in her power armour the Captain would have had to wake her, but for now the men exited silently and the soldier rest in peace, she had earned that much.

**Well this chapter didn't take too long did it? Sorry about the small word count in the latest chapters but I'm trying to ease back into this. Thank you for the kind review Moonburner it MOVED me! Every comment and favourite is keeping me going to bring this happy little tale about space, friendship and killing one another to theatrical close. Ideas, complaints blah blah blah you know the song and dance. **


	12. Chapter 12

**Point Lookout?**

The Captain had woken with a start, he had no idea where he was, well that was a lie he knew exactly where he was, he simply had no idea why he was there. The grey skies and smell of irradiated salt water (has a distinctly worse aroma than a healthy sea would) was the first and defining clues as to his whereabouts, and the sight of the rotting wood which made Madam Panada's pathetic little store was the definitive proof that he was officially in hell. The Captain calmly looked around and took in his surroundings... and then began to laugh with a horrifying expression on his face, as he did so the ground began twist and move around as it turned into a sickeningly soft pink fleshy material and enveloped him whole, he simply sunk, cackling like a maniac into the abyss and then the Captain was no more.

**Space**

Olin nervously looked over to the Captain who was sleeping in the Co-pilot's seat and gently shook him awake. He woke up with a sharp grunt that surprised them both, the Captain quickly regained his composure and was smiling his deceivingly innocent smile.

"I thought you would like to be awake for the grand release" Olin said mechanically, ever the ice queen.

"You thought right, your powers of deduction are as splendiferous as always" The Captain replied cheerfully.

"That's not a word"

"I'm sure it is"

"I don't believe you"

"And I find that hurtful" The two continued on like this for the few minutes it took for Olin to finish typing her commands into the modified computer in the orbital-bird or "ORBI" (as the modified verti-birds had been dubbed by Sally). With one last hit of the enter button an extremely modified artillery bot had been detached from the under side of the ORBI, with tiny thrusters it moved itself in front of the bird and maintained it's position.

"Congratulations sir, the WRM now own and operate the only functional satellite in the orbit of earth, I'm sure you're... friend Three Dog will be happy"

"A whole space ship to explore and all he asks about is when he can be back on the air" The Captain chuckled light heartedly, he had a soft spot for Three Dog, this seemed to put Olin at ease as she saw the Captain relax.

"If you don't mind me asking sir... were you having a bad dream?" The Captain grew very quiet for a long time before he spoke.

"Do you have any family Olin?" The Captain asked softy.

"Probably... back east" she managed to mumble in response.

"Good memories?"

"Of course"

"I... lost mine... they were taken from me, apparently I had a father but... he's gone now, truth be told I don't even know how old I really am, my boyish charms make forever 19 of course but..." The Captain didn't continue and Olin didn't push him to, she simply set a course back to the ship, which was cut short when the engines suddenly went off-line along with communications.

**ZETA**

Sally had been quite proud of her latest feat of engineering and more importantly matchmaking brilliance, the girl had to bypass four security protocols in the ship and another three in the docking computer to make sure her former sabotage wasn't discovered. She smiled smugly at her kill switch, a modified C4 detonator which activated a small EMP device stashed on the ship which would result in an hour of what she hoped would be a romantic, possibly life threatening drift through space.

**Ever Glow National Campground **

Pitt had spent the last four hours walking in the wasteland with nothing but Bittercup's company... life as he knew it had lost all meaning.

"Sooooo what do you think?" she asked in her high toned annoying drill through your skull voice.

"No one is going to let you paint the ship purple... where the fuck would you get that much paint anyway?" Pitt replied in a monotone plea for death.

"Something in the wasteland has to bleed purple right?"

"I hate you" Before this bonding session could continue Pitt saw proof of WCB's madness. Four super mutants piled up, all dead from energy weapons, it was to far from any WRM outpost or route and no one else came out here any more, the WCB was moving for little lamplight, and the FEV held in the vault, it was the only thing that made sense. The two had give Ever Green a wide birth lest they walk smack dab into a WCB patrol but even so they should have seen signs of them, around, a scout here, a dead waste lander there, but the wasteland seemed nice...er which means they were throwing everything they had at the vault, an act that left them far to vulnerable for far to small of a prize, why? Pitt had a very bad feeling.

"Uh any particular reason we're staring at dead mutants?" Bittercup whined, Pitt had a very bad feeling and the fact she was his backup made everything much, much worse.

**ZETA**

Commander Lyons as she now went by had been getting acquainted with her new home, and boy was it a shit ton better anything else she ever dealt with on earth. She and the rest of the Brotherhood had spent more than a while gawking at the food materialisers, actual food, an indulgence more decadent than a thousand orgies, at least that's what she though as she devoured more steaks and pudding than humanly possible... seriously it should not have been possible, Elliot forced her to take a full physical before she could continue her tour. After her trip down pre-war lane with Elliot as he ran test after test she decided to wander into robot assembly to see Bigsly... and watch him squirm.

"Oh" Bigsly exclaimed as he saw Lyons enter in her black uniform (She thought a trench coat was a bit much but it was warm and soft so she didn't really care). "You out rank me again don't you?" Bigsly's face almost seemed to physically loose all of it's energy. Lyons knew he was throwing her a bone, he wasn't stupid, he knew damn well letting the brotherhood on the ship would lead to this, guess he still had a little affection left for the people he had spent his entire life with.

"Captain said my first order of business should be to get used to the ship, so I figured who better to get up to speed on engineering than you, so I'll expect a FULL and detailed report on my desk in oh let's say three hours?" Lyons purred as she eyed Bigsly like a lion who had spent the better part of a day ripping a small animal apart for fun "I know how much you love paperwork" Just because he threw her a bone doesn't mean she wasn't going to fuck with him.

"Of course, I'm so GLAD we brought the brotherhood into the fold"

"We missed you too"

"Kill me now" Bigsly muttered as he slumped into his office. Lyons found herself more and more disturbed as she moved through the ship, the brotherhood had spent hundreds of years trying to bring some order to the world, then some fucked up weirdo shows up, proves the existence of aliens, murders said existence and then creates a near utopia on a ship which then does in days what they had spent the last few centuries trying to do. She found herself leaving the assembly and on the lower deck of the main reactor room, the centre which connected the three main areas of the ship, the civilians dubbed it the plaza and it fitted it's name perfectly, the civilians had turned the lower deck of the plaza into the recreation area, shops, a bar even a dance floor styled to one of those old diners that dot the wasteland, people were happy, not just surviving, not just better off than the other town, actually happy, the whole vibe was more alien than the ship ever could be.

"Eld- ah Commander!" One of the dancers (it was a new thing for everyone, which is to say they all sucked) ceased their awkward twisting and turning and rushed towards Lyons. She recognised him as one of the younger recruits, probably joined up back when they looked like they had the Wanderer working for them.

"Broken anything yet?" She asked as she contently drank a nuka cola and leaned back to watch the scene unfold before her (a ghoul doing the peppermint twist was something not to be missed).

"Not for lack of trying" he chuckled as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Not sure anyone would notice in that... whatever that's supposed to be"

"Should probably play it safe and stick to killing super mutants"

"And I thought you were a soldier, get back in there and... do... whatever it is you're supposed to do on a slippery surface crowded with people deafened by loud music"

"Not you're best speech"

"Yeah I'll work on it" Lyons recalled the Captain twisting her about back on the surface, did that freak actually practice dancing?

**Space**

"Well... shit" The Captain yawned as he looked at the small EMP device "I do believe I know a little girl who's going spend a lot of time cleaning the inside of robots" Olin worked on the console powering up system after system until the automated process kicked in, mostly she tried to avoid eye contact with the Captain, it was surprising how virtuous an ice queen can be when she's trapped in a small confined space with the possibly mentally challenged object of her desire. The Captain toyed around with his pip-boy until he tuned it to the satellite's frequency, he was disappointed to miss Three Dog's come back speech but the waltz he was playing was his favourite and he wasn't going to let the occasion pass by without some ceremony and a memory. He moved to the cockpit and with a single fluid movement spun Olin out of her seat and into an impressive dip.

"If this is a murder attempt I'd rather take a bullet" Olin exclaimed in a mechanical yet ever so slightly flustered voice.

"We're back on the air! And if that's not something to dance to then nothing is." The Captain brought her back up and began move them in a slow methodical circle around the small space, Olin considered objecting but knew he probably wouldn't listen, besides he wasn't wrong it was a special occasion, they were back.

**Author's note**

**Back indeed! Wow it's been more than a little while! I had almost forgotten about this but then the strangest thing happened, the story got another favourite! I don't know how many of you crazy waste landers are still reading this but for those who are and those who just started I figured I'd finish this chapter up and see if the holidays could produce some more antics from our favourite homicidal crew! Please feel free to dis me out in the comments for being such a dick and letting "real" life get in the way but for however long or little it is, I'm back! And for fun I thought we'd try a little something, if you like a particular character let me know, the character with the most votes will have a full biographical entry posted, if you want to know about an original character or how one of the game's characters fit in my universe and their history as I imagine it it'll be revealed. It's good to be back. **


	13. Forum

**So this story's has a forum now! Check it out and say…. Stuff I guess, I'd like to hear from you guys and girls and hopefully find something to get me out of this crippling writer's block I've been in.**

**forum link: forum/WRM-The-revengening/162585/1/87950/ **


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